Category: Arc 2

Root lay on her back. All things considered, this was not her least favorite position to find herself in. In fact, some of her best times had been spent lying

Root pushed through the double doors leading into the treasure room. “Table for four?” She stopped there at the threshold. She hadn’t expected an ancient treasure room in an old

There were two appetizer options on the Oubliette Steakhouse menu. The first was a type of larva raised in and harvested from fish carcasses, brined, breaded, seared in a pan

Sometimes, when you’re in the grubbier part of a city and in need of a store where you can buy or sell some sort of something (whether you know what

The city of Midden was home to some of the least controversial political figures in the worlds. Atnaterra and Setoterra alike were rife with political turmoil. Take Zhaen-or-Daijia for instance—a

“I, for one, don’t trust him,” said Beel. “No more running about doing errands for sketchy folks who say things like ‘I’m only asking a fair price.’ Was Ophylla being

Every map of Atnaterra had a blemish just to the east of the city of Midden. Cartographers never included the mark—never intentionally—but it always wound up there, somehow, shortly after

The village of Lallslatt was nothing special by any stretch of the imagination; even the most reinforced imaginations usually snapped back to spawn a stinging welt before they could be

Betrum had no back door. Or rather, he did, but it was even narrower and somewhat messy and there were nails sticking out because he was “doing renovations,” or at

There’s great debate about what tops the list of the most embarrassing things to shop for. Contraceptives are commonly cited, alongside the accouterments that make them necessary, or unnecessary, or

The first hurdle in the hunt for the second item on Pag’s list of potion ingredients—dallywill-shembulgart cream—was figuring out what, precisely, dallywill-shembulgart cream was. Knowing the name alone offered them

Root propped herself on her elbows to see over the top of the pile of bricks that hid them all from sight. Leftovers from the bridge construction most likely, they’d

Atnaterra boasted a buffet of regions—pockets of geography that varied with such unabashed and explosive eccentricity that they were nearly worth categorizing as realms of their own. But it wasn’t

According to the late questologist Tud Walrop’s leading theory on the condensation of mundane quest travel, a five-minute journey is an impossibility. He detailed this hypothesis mostly in the margins

They knocked on Gropply’s door after no time at all. At first Root thought her knock nearly shook the panel from its hinges, until she looked again and realized there

“It just seems like poor marketing,” said Vit. The four of them stood on the street outside the store. The sign above the door, in big letters painted to look

The ground inside the cave made a lot of echoing crunches—not all on its own, but rather helped along by the soles of Root’s boots. She didn’t bother to look

“I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned just yet, but I’m not a fan of all this walking,” said Beel, who had said the exact same, word for word, an hour

For the second time that day, they knocked on Gropply’s door. He answered and stared unblinking up at them with a look lacking recognition. Azriah held up the can, its

Sticky with sweat and sugar, they climbed off the roof and back down the ladder. Root stepped back to assess the patched corner of the roof. In the process, she

Hunting for toe of trout proved no easier or less humiliating than their search for dallywill-shembulgart cream. Realistically, it should have—at least in the sense that, as far as Root

Leaving the woods felt like leaving a house you hadn’t felt all that welcome in to begin with—whether the home of a friend of a friend, an acquaintance from work,

“Perhaps a river should’ve been where we started this leg of the hunt,” said Vit as the sound of moving water came into earshot. They’d struck a path northleft-east after

The vines lashed at Root’s wrists, pinning them to the arms of the chair and then snaking around twice, three times, until her greatest tugs did nothing. Her heart pounded.

Root, Azriah, and Beel ran outside. Or rather, Root and Azriah ran. Beel didn’t so much run as hover reluctantly by the others for fear of what might befall him

They arrived in Wunksfeld much sooner than expected. It hadn’t felt like two miles, as the sign declared. In Root’s estimation, judging by the degree of increased discomfort in her

Eliondra told them all that she knew. Her children had gone missing after leaving home in the morning two days prior. They’d been out playing in the woods to the

A common perception of primordial humans paints them as territorial to the point of savage violence, donning (even before they invented clothes) a cumbersome xenophobia of “us versus them” in

Instinct nearly raised Root’s hand to knock when they returned to Glabigal’s shack. Given that their previous entry had come in the wake of a very brief meeting between Azriah’s

Root tried to use Rushela as leverage in her push for taking a bridge back across the gully, even if it came at the combined cost of a riddle and

If possible, Pag seemed to have hung even more obstacles from her ceiling since they’d last visited, as if she delighted in turning her home into an unnavigable maze for

Lallslatt greeted them just as it had the first time, with many, many prying eyes and just as many itchy fingers, like a nosy spider with eczema (and also fingers).

“Well that’s not good at all,” continued Syrus. His words had an edge of concern, but alongside it swam the casual sarcasm of someone not terribly worried about the bloodthirsty

Root lay in bed. She hadn’t been horizontal this much since Unn, or maybe even before she left home. A comfy bed and nothing immediately demanding her verticality had become

If one thing got taken for granted in the city of Midden, it was having someone to blame for all of your problems. Every morning, the city’s inhabitants rolled out

The five of them continued to work on their plans through the afternoon—or rather, four of them did, while Beel sat by the window and whined anytime something flew a

“If it’s all right with you, I think we’ll walk back,” said Azriah as the five of them stepped out of the restaurant towards their waiting carriage. “You’ve given us

As anticipated, and much to the fault of her own traitorous tongue, Root awoke with a headache. She muttered a long string of expletives ranging from the blunt, common, and

The sun rose on a Midden primed for grand happenings—metaphorically, that is. The city of Midden had never seen a sun, and if a sun had appeared over the city,

Instinct told Root to duck. She darted backwards to hide behind the building’s corner, nearly tripping over Beel as she went. The wax in her ears spared her from hearing

With a bow, Hamlick waddled backstage; Root and Azriah did the same, albeit with a little more movement in the knees and torso. They didn’t have eyes on Ajis, but

Root stood at the top of the hill. Midden didn’t sit on a particularly inclined plot of land—rather, it generally took an apathetic approach to most matters—but from the left-east