‘You underestimate us,’ came a voice from directly above, which made Olt jump and grab for his axes. He looked up, squinted, and relaxed as he made out the half-visible form of Aelyn crouched on a high bough. Her garb blended with the undergrowth to a degree that seemed almost supernatural. For all Olt knew, it was. He touched two fingers to the warding flame tattooed in the hollow of his throat, then to the heart-spark inscribed on his chest.

‘Careful with gestures like that, in there,’ said the aelf, pointing with her chin at the city ahead. Olt looked back at it, a long, curving wall forty feet high, made from iron and marble and painted with some oily treatment to ward off the acid rains spawned by the volcanoes that rumbled high above. Rooftops and spires and flags jutted above that wall. A hill rose towards the city’s centre with more buildings crowding its slopes and clinging to its crest.

‘Before the Heavensgates opened, I never seen more than a dozen or so buildings in one place,’ he grumbled to Aelyn. ‘Small tribes, high walls, sharp spears and everyone knew everyone else. What do you Heav’ners need so many buildings for anyway?’

‘Olt…’ said Aelyn.

‘I’ll wear my cloak, don’t worry,’ Olt replied. ‘Go tell the chief we’ve found it. And stop sneakin’ up on me!’ he called after Aelyn as she melted back into the canopy.

‘Stop making it so easy, then…’ her voice floated back to him.

Olt settled into the underbrush with a scowl and watched Draconium with wary eyes.

Metal glinted, the helms and speartips of guards patrolling the walls.

Lots of guards, he thought.

A wide waterway emerged through a heavy metal portcullis in the city wall, a broad roadway running alongside it, both cutting through the marsh and punching into the forest a few miles to Olt’s right. A few heavily laden barges sat on that waterway as though waiting to enter the city, but he noted that nothing was moving.

The brutish flanks of the volcanic Redspines marched away to the east and west, soon lost in a haze of sulphur-smoke and rain. Overhead, clouds were gathering thick and dark, thunderheads flowing down in waves from the north and piling up over the city. Lightning sparked in their depths. It reached crooked fingers down to jab at the mountainsides.

An uncomfortable tightness settled in Olt’s gut as he stared at the city. He glanced at the twin calderas that overlooked Draconium and offered up a silent prayer to their guardian spirits.

‘We get in there, we do what the chief wants, and we get out again,’ he said to himself, touching his warding flame again. ‘And we do it flickerswift.’