Quite a long chapter today. Hope you like it!
Also, I appreciate the Marcela POVs so close together are not to everyones taste. They should have been spread out throughout the first half of the book but I'd been pushing them back, and it reached a point where the story wouldn't make complete sense without them. There are two more for the book left but I'll hold off for a bit.
Hedge Wizard 5 audiobook launched today for those interested. Here's the link: https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Hedge-Wizard-5-Audiobook/B0GJ7CXXFG
Hump gazed out across the empty plain of moss. No food, no water, and no way out. Well, that wasn’t strictly true. There were countless ways to leave this place, but one wrong step and they might find themselves once more floating through the darkness of the abyss, just like when they had first fallen through the veil from Elenvine.
It was a shit spot to be in. He’d cursed out Loften a hundred times now, but any more than that wasn’t going to do any good. What they needed were solutions, not more problems, and right now that was becoming more and more of an issue. Bud’s laughter rattled through the plain like that of a madman.
Nishari lifted her head from Hump’s lap at the sound, a low rumble building in her chest. The moss around her jaws blackened slightly where stray heat escaped her mouth. She did not understand the words, but she understood tone. Her eyes tracked Bud warily before shifting back to Hump, as if checking whether she should bare her teeth or stay still.
“You need to stop,” Acalin told him. “This is the last thing we need.”
The altari was on his feet, holding Prince Marcoff back and trying to maintain some element of friendly alliance between them all. They had taken Loften’s departure even worse than the rest of them.
But Bud shook his head. “Not only did Loften destroy my faith, but he, the one god that actually bothered to speak with me directly, then abandoned all of us to die in this place. You must see the irony of the situation.”
“Our god would not abandon us!” Princess Urella snapped. “There must be a purpose to this. A reason that he needed to leave.”
“After all we have learned, you’re a fool to think that,” Bud said.
“Please, Bud,” Acalin said. “Don’t make this any harder. You’re better than this. This isn’t the noble knight I came to respect.”
Bud looked away and said softly, “Unfortunately, he was just as much a fool as the rest of you.”
“Out of the way, Acalin,” Prince Marcoff said. “I won’t stand for this.”
Bud smirked and gave him the most arrogant look Hump had ever seen on the knight’s face. “What are you going to do?”
Marcoff tried to push past Acalin, but the larger altari pressed him back and dragged him away, his own party helping him. As he strode past Hump, his jaw was clenched in anger. “Get your pack in order.”
Hump watched him go with a sigh, then turned to Bud. “Not helpful.”
“We are stranded in the abyss,” Bud said. “How much help can I be?”
“A little positivity would be nice,” Hump shot back. “Keeping the altari on our side would be helpful, but honestly, even just sitting there silently would be better than this. You’re out of control.”
“If there was anything about our situation to be positive about, maybe I would try a little harder.”
“We’re alive.” Celaine was seated cross-legged on the mossy ground, sorting through their food rations, checking through each on the storage crystals on her belt. “We have food and water. Nobody is injured. There is plenty to be positive about.”
“Not for long,” Bud said.
Emilia stormed to her feet from opposite Celaine. She strode over to Bud and loomed over him. “Enough, Bud. You might have given up, but the rest of us haven’t. I get that you’re a mess, but snap out of it.”
Bud stared up at her. The smile slipped from his face. He averted his gaze, staring down at the stone.
“I haven’t given up. I’ve just accepted reality. We’re stranded here, Emilia. Stranded by Loften.”
He gave a helpless shrug. “Can you blame me for feeling a little defeated?”
“I don’t blame you for that,” Emilia said. “I blame you for making an arse of yourself and making the rest of our lives more difficult. Now cut it out and either sit there quietly or start being helpful. It’s not over. We still have options.”
“What options?” Bud asked. “We don’t know left from right in this place.”
“I have some ideas,” Emilia said. “If you’d starting thinking with your head instead of letting your anger get the better of you then maybe you’d have some ideas too. Can I share them or will you try to start a fight with me too? Or is it just the altari you have a problem with?”
Bud closed his eyes for a long moment, breathing steadily. Finally, he sighed. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“It’s not me you need to apologise to.”
Bud pushed himself to his feet. “Give me a minute.”
“Maybe give them a chance to cool off first,” Dylan suggested.
Bud looked over to the altari who were arguing quietly. “Alright.” He turned back to Emilia. “What are your ideas?”
“To start with, Celaine, do you think you could track Loften?” Emilia asked. “We don’t need to know our way out of this place if we follow him to where he is going.”
“I managed to locate the rift that he passed through,” Celaine said. “There’s a chance—and I mean a slim chance—that I could find the next one after that. Essence doesn’t behave like I’m used to in this place, and there’s not a whole lot to track through lands of empty stone and barren wastelands. The rifts are constantly changing. Reliably finding his path with so many variables would be a problem.”
“An achievable problem?” Emilia asked.
Celaine glanced at Hump. “I assume you’ve got some tracking spells in your book?”
Hump nodded. “I don’t know how much good they’ll be, but yeah, there’ll be some spells.”
“The only way to find out is to try it,” Celaine said. “Considering how quickly Loften goes through different fragments, I think it’s unlikely we’ll find him.”
“A last resort then,” Emilia said.
“Also these rifts aren’t stable,” Dylan added. “There’s no guarantee that we can all make it through before one closes. He was stabilising them with that artifact of his. We’ll need to figure that out first.”
“Any idea how?” Emilia asked.
Dylan looked at Hump. “What do you think? Some sort of essence anchor should do the job, right?”
“I would think so,” Hump said. “As long as it has an essence stone or even my staff to draw fuel from, it shouldn’t disappear on us.”
“I still think we will most likely end up wandering through rifts aimlessly before we find Loften,” Celaine said.
“Then maybe we need to adjust our focus,” Dylan said. “Figure out how Loften was navigating the abyss and find our own way to Alveron or the Path to Heaven. Or honestly, anywhere with food and water. I don’t know how this moss survives, but it’s certainly not edible.”
“It’s crossed my mind that Loften may have left us what we need,” Emilia said. “He was hardly a trustworthy ally, but he brought us this far and seemed somewhat honour-bound. I struggle to believe that he would simply abandon us to die.”
“What exactly did he say when he left?” Hump asked.
“That if luck has it, we will meet again,” Celaine said.
“If we have a method to leave, why wouldn’t he just tell us?” Bud asked. “Why make it so difficult?”
Hump let out a groan in realisation. “Because he doesn’t want us to follow him.”
“What do you mean?” Dylan asked.
“If he tells us how to navigate the rift, then we can just stalk him through the next ones. By not telling us, we’re forced to figure it out ourselves, by which point it’s too late to follow him. Which mean the clue is probably in my staff.”
“It crossed my mind,” Emilia said. “How can you find out?”
“I’m not entirely sure, but I have an idea. Give me a few minutes.”
His focus drifted to his staff. When Loften had upgraded the staff, it hadn’t been a mere improvement of craftsmanship. The weapon had changed—it had advanced to the rank of diamond. Evolved into something more sensitive and precise. Loften had relief on his own artifact to navigate the abyss. He had spoken of it almost casually, as if describing a map.
A maze of threads, he had said. Threads of essence binding realms together and influencing them. It was those threads that the god had followed. If Hump could find them perhaps he could follow them too.
Hump planted his staff lightly against the ground and closed his eyes. Essence followed from him into the runes. One by one, they stirred. The complex patterns along the shaft brightening in silent pulses. He let his senses imbue the staff, and then stretch outward, expanding them in the same way he might manifest his soul on the world, only far more subtle.
At first, he senses resistance. All he felt was the ambient essence of nature in this place. It was overwhelming, almost. Thick like water, dulling his senses, swallowing intent before it could travel far. And at the very edges, all he sensed was darkness. Yet as he adjusted, as he keyed into the resonance of his staff, he felt it gentle hum in his hand. Suddenly, essence was projected—a subtle, probing pulse.
Then, faintly, something answered. Not exactly a vibration, but a tug at the edge of his awareness. Bursts of intent lit up his senses, rippling through the darkness like threads.
But they felt thin, almost like they could snap and he would lose them in a heartbeat.
Hump exhaled softly. “It’s working, but there’s a complication. The threads feel fragile. I’m not sure if it’s the rifts or the intent itself, but I wouldn’t trust following anything I’m feeling.”
“Loften never went straight through,” Dylan said. “Perhaps you can stabilise it somehow.”
“Perhaps,” Hump said, exasperated. “You understand that if I mess this up, whoever steps through that portal is dead, right?”
“Hump, I don’t know if you realise this,” Emilia said, “but if you don’t get a portal open and stable for us, we’re going to die here anyway. We have, what, two months’ worth of supplies? Maybe less? I’m not sure I want to count on Loften coming back for us.”
Hump frowned. “This is the worst kind of wizardry.”
“What do you mean, the worst?” Celaine said. “It’s exciting. You’re getting to explore unknowns. Test new boundaries. Experiment. You love experimenting.”
“That’s true,” Bud said, finally perking up. “You do love experimenting.”
Hump gave them both his most disapproving glare. “My experiments usually have at least some basis for success.”
They stared back at him, faces flat.
“They do!” Hump insisted.
“Do we need to talk about that time I almost chopped off your hand again?” Celaine asked.
Hump sighed.
“It’s a good thing,” Celaine continued. “Think of it this way. This is your area of expertise.”
“Before you start, give me a chance to apologise to everyone,” Bud said. “I shouldn’t have said that to the altari. I don’t know what came over me.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Hump shot him a grin. “The fact you have flaws makes me feel better about myself.”
***
With the help of the others, Hump reduced the problem to a few clear steps.
First, and most crucially, they needed a way to avoid walking blindly into the abyss. Loften had relied on his artifact as a detector, something that could sense and isolate the threads of essence connecting one realm to another. He had not wandered at random. He had chosen a destination, located its thread, and followed it.
From the brief glimpse Hump had managed to steal, he understood the principle, if not the mastery behind it. Beyond every rift lay strands of intent woven through the darkness, like ribbons drifting in an unseen current. They varied in thickness, colour, and strength. Some pulsed faintly, others, supposedly, thrummed with life. It was one of those threads that would lead them back to Alveron, or at the very least, to somewhere habitable.
Hells, he would take even a demon world at this point. At least there might be a means to survive or gather information there.
The theory seemed simple. Practice was far more challenging.
Two days passed in careful experimentation. Hump tested rifts, adjusted the resonance of his staff, and followed various threads across the realm they were in. By the end, he stood before one particular tear in the veil that felt different from the rest. Through there, he sensed a brighter intent. The moment he first sensed it, he’d latched onto it. And now, he planted his staff, closed his eyes, and focused.
Essence flowed into the runes of his staff, filtering ambient essence into a controlled, probing pulse. A final check to make sure he finally had the right spot.
“It’s kind of like striking a tuning fork,” Emilia had said.
Hump had frowned but nodded confidently. “Sure. I know what a tuning fork is.”
“It’s used to tune instruments to the correct note,” Emilia said patiently. “In the same way, you’re trying to locate a rift where the fragment on the other side shares a frequency with the thread your staff is attuned to. If it hums back, we know we’re on the right path.”
It was a reasonable metaphor, Hump decided.
He had taken time over the past two days to consistently attune his staff to the strongest threads he could sense. The problem was that they were never still. The threads shifted constantly, sliding through the abyss like currents beneath black water. It wasn’t enough to catch one in a single moment. He needed to recognise its resonance anywhere, at any time, from any angle within the plane.
Sometimes it felt as though the thread hovered above them, high in the false sky where a sun ought to be. Other times it seemed buried deep beneath their feet, like something rooted in the heart of the fragment itself. Wherever it manifested, he had to be able to recognise it by its intent alone.
Only when he felt confident in that could he attempt the next step.
Once they passed through a rift, finding the same thread again would be even more difficult. At least, that was the theory. The abyss did not obey predictable rules and ideas. There was no north, no east, only a resonance that he was attempting to follow.
Now, standing before a rift that opened onto a world of dark stone and jagged edges, Hump felt they had finally found the right one.
For hours he had tested different rifts, shifting locations, probing, withdrawing, listening. Most had answered weakly. Brittle, fading responses that felt like they would snap the moment he leaned on them. Others were chaotic, their resonance fractured or polluted.
But this one…
He could feel it clearly through the runes of his staff. A steady vibration. Not violent. Not unstable. Sustained.
Not all threads were stable, and even fewer rifts were. Most were little more than thin scars in the veil that could collapse without warning. This one had weight to it. Substance.
They had decided against brute forcing it open the way Loften had. The god could wrench the veil aside and hold it there by sheer power and will. Hump could not. If he tried, the rift might tear or fold in on itself.
He had to do this carefully.
Hump pressed his staff firmly at the edge of the rift and began feeding it essence. The runes along the shaft ignited in sequence, drinking in the ambient energy around them and redirecting it. He anchored the staff’s resonance to the rift, allowing it to draw on that power if it began to weaken. Rather than forcing the breach, he strengthened what was already there, fuelling it.
“Is everyone ready?” Hump asked.
“We’re ready,” Emilia said.
Hump increased the flow. Essence poured from him into the staff. The crystal focus flared with bright blue light, pure and concentrated. The rift shimmered, its edges stabilising instead of fraying.
Nishari’s wings spread instinctively as the veil distorted, her body lowering like a predator bracing against a storm. A thin stream of smoke curled from her nostrils as she watched the rift with wary fascination.
“Now,” Hump said through gritted teeth. “Go.”
Quickly, Bud passed through, followed by the altari and passed through. Dylan and Emilia were next. The rift trembled as each body displaced the fragile threshold.
Hump could feel the drain through his arms. The staff’s reserves were falling fast, but his preparation was holding. The rift remained steady.
Celaine was last through, Nishari darting close behind her.
Then it was Hump’s turn.
He pulled the staff free and stepped forward, careful not to stumble at the threshold. For a split second there was the familiar sensation of cold liquid sliding over his skin.
Then he landed hard on solid ground.
Dark stone stretched beneath his boots.
Cheers rose around him in immediate relief.
“We made—”
“Stop,” Celaine snapped.
The sound cut through the celebration instantly.
She tilted her head, listening. “I heard a noise in the distance.”
“What kind of noise?” Emilia whispered.
Celaine hesitated. “It sounded like the scream of a demon.”
Hump’s hand went to his face.
“I think I know why some rifts are stronger than others.”
“Why?” Dylan asked.
Hump lowered his hand slowly. “We chose the rift with the strongest resonance. The one most filled with essence and intent. The one capable of sustaining life.”
He looked up at the jagged skyline, where black spires cut into a blood-tinged sky.
“Who else do you think might choose that?”
“Demons,” his party said as one.
Hump exhaled.
“It’s quite possible,” he said quietly, “that I’ve just brought us to a demonic world.”