Summoned to the Wilds

Damien¹ leads Amma² to limestone karsts where a vampire den hides beneath a lake. They ride self-propelled canoes through caves lit by bioluminescent spiders. Rapture,⁸ a stunning vampire hostess, greets Damien¹ with proprietary familiarity that twists Amma's² stomach.

The den is an underground palace of polished stone and luminous water. Ivory and Asphodel, two vampires, are assigned to entertain Amma.² They tour a library, an armory, and a lush subterranean garden that briefly steals her breath.

But when Ivory casually drinks from a servant's throat at dinner, Amma² faints. She wakes to learn these vampires exclusively feed on convicted criminals, but the revelation does little to ease her awareness that she is the only warm-blooded guest not designated as food.

The entire den participates in a blood ritual to wake Lycoris,⁶ the first vampire, from decades of hibernation. Amma² and Damien¹ contribute their blood to the rose quartz casket. Lycoris⁶ emerges towering and boisterous, drenched in charisma and gore. She clears the chamber to speak with Amma² alone.

Sensing both the talisman and an older earthen magic dormant within her, Lycoris⁶ coaxes Amma² into sprouting an acorn into a seedling. Then she makes her offer: removing the talisman would require Amma's² death, but Lycoris⁶ can resurrect her as a vampire, immortal and powerful. When asked on a goddess-sworn oath if she truly wants it removed, Amma² says yes. Lycoris⁶ calls her a liar. Amma² returns to Damien¹ unchanged.

Jealous of Rapture,⁸ Amma² accepts a confidence potion from Ivory. That night, she drinks it, dresses in a revealing black gown, and bursts into Damien's¹ chamber. She climbs onto his lap and kisses him fiercely. He responds before stopping cold, recognizing her intoxication.

Using the Chthonic command, he forces her to confess: she took the potion because she feared he would choose Rapture⁸ over her. Instead of taking advantage, Damien¹ binds her to the bed as a mock punishment, then lies beside her reading.

Frustrated, she begs him to follow through. He refuses, admitting she has undone twenty-seven years of evil training, that he would rather fall through the Abyss than hurt her, and that he cares for her more deeply than he understands. He then orders her to forget it as a dream.

Before leaving the karsts, Damien¹ asks Lycoris⁶ about his human mother. What she reveals shatters his understanding of his origins: his parents were not merely parties to a cold bargain but were genuinely married and in love. His mother did not abandon him; she abducted him as a child, fleeing Aszath Koth with young Xander³ in tow, and took them to Eirengaard.

Zagadoth was not randomly imprisoned; he was captured by King Archibald while attempting to rescue his son. Birzuma, Xander's³ demon mother, eventually retrieved both boys. Lycoris⁶ also tells Damien¹ his mother was from Orrinshire, a village near the capital. Everything Damien¹ believed about his past, his father, and his own nature requires recalibration.

Days later, on the road, Amma² gently suggests that perhaps Damien's¹ mother was not escaping her bargain but escaping a demon. The implication that Zagadoth might have been a captor, not a husband, detonates inside Damien.¹ He storms into the forest alone.

Rage, grief, and confusion trigger an uncontrolled expulsion of noxscura. Trees for fifty paces in every direction crack, blacken, and rot. The ground turns grey and lifeless. When Damien¹ regains himself, he sees an entire ring of forest corrupted into undead husks, vibrating with infernal energy.

He realizes he could have torn open a fissure to the infernal plane. The destructive capacity terrifies him, and he sees in himself the demonic evil he has been questioning, fearing what he might one day do to Amma.²

The Innomina Wildwood accepts them, the forest itself shifting magically around their arrival. A giant shadow-cat named Soot attacks Kaz,⁴ and Amma² instinctively calls roots from the ground to save the imp, then collapses from the magical expenditure. A witch named Kalani¹⁰ stops the fight and leads them to a camp in ancient ruins.

Em,⁹ a crone with flowers sprouting from her skin, explains the trees foretold Amma's² coming. The witches agree to train her in exchange for Damien's¹ help with a corruption problem. For a week, Amma² struggles: she cannot reach hessach (a meditative arcane state), cannot conjure a staff, and feels her magic is merely borrowed from plants rather than emanating from within.

While Damien¹ is away with the witches, Amma² finds a pink liathau leaf on the forest floor. It should not exist: liathau grows only in Faebarrow. Em⁹ leads her to a single wild liathau tree, over fifty thousand years old, towering above the canopy.

The tree speaks into her mind, irritable and ancient, and demands she climb if she wants its seeds. Barefoot, Amma² ascends through the perilous heights. A giant serpent attacks; she shoots it with her crossbow and finally conjures a staff from the tree itself to defend herself.

A venomous flying rodent she freed earlier paralyzes the snake. At the peak, she collects three precious seeds. The tree offers to help remove the talisman. Amma² says tomorrow, and climbs down, the seeds a promise of Faebarrow's renewal.

Damien¹ travels with three witches to a blighted spire rotting at the heart of the wildwood. The corruption spreads outward in a growing circle, turning trees to blackened pulp. When Damien¹ touches the spire, an ancient consciousness invades his mind, showing him visions of universal destruction and his own childhood abduction. The entity calls itself E'nloc and asks if he is one of its kind.

Refusing, Damien¹ helps the witches construct a ritual circle. Using bastardized spells reversed from the Lux Codex translations, they channel both infernal and earthen magic into a banishing. The spire collapses into wet ash. But Damien¹ now knows this ancient evil exists, and something in it recognized the noxscura in his veins.

Corben the raven returns with Laurel's message: Faebarrow is safe, the undead army now helps with daily tasks under Tia's direction, and Cedric⁷ escaped the massacre. Someone cleared out his quarters before Laurel could search them. Moments later, the Righteous Sentries attack the witches' camp, having tracked Damien's¹ infernal arcana across the realm.

Their weapons are now divinely enhanced. Barrett's blessed sword slashes Damien's¹ arm, and the wound will not heal. Amma² negotiates with Em⁹ to hold the Sentries while they flee. In the forest, she leads Damien¹ to a portal to the Everdarque she had been shown during her training. They crawl through the hollow of a tree and tumble into a frozen, moonless world of endless winter.

King Wil,⁵ an antlered fae of terrifying beauty, initially imprisons them as suspected spies from the Summer Court. Damien¹ collapses from his wound. Amma² treats him with a fae-provided salve labeled for surly blood mages, which puts him into a three-day hibernation. During those days, she befriends the lonely king, who has been alone for eons after losing a game.

She teaches him snowball fights, sledding, and hemlock tea. They bargain: Amma² will help Wil⁵ throw a party to lure back the other seasonal courts, and he will grant safe passage home. Damien¹ wakes to find Amma² planning festivities. He discovers a game board with figurines filled with pure noxscura and luxerna, realizing the fae's casual proximity to world-ending arcana.

The party succeeds; all four fae courts attend. At its end, Wil⁵ offers Amma² her reward: a chalice of pure noxscura that will make her unimaginably powerful. Tempted by the chance to become someone Damien¹ could respect, someone strong enough to control her fate, she lifts the cup to her lips. Damien,¹ having seen the game board and understanding the danger, shouts the Chthonic command word.

Amma² freezes mid-drink. He knocks the cup away, then releases her. She is incandescent with fury. He broke his solemn vow never to use that word on her again. She screams that he does not know what it is to be weak and afraid, and storms into the forest alone. A fae named Rea slips her a luxerna figurine before she leaves.

While Amma² walks off her rage, the Righteous Sentries ambush her with enhanced magic. Xander³ appears to Damien,¹ revealing he allied with the Sentries, gave them divine weapons, and led them to Amma.² He taunts Damien¹ about having to kill her himself and translocates away. The Sentries bind and gag Amma² and take her to Krepmar Keep in Brineberth.

There, Roman Caldor¹¹ greets her warmly, too dim to recognize his brother's evil. Locked in a tower room, Amma² cuts her chest with pottery and activates the raven feather Damien¹ gave her, summoning him across the realm. She then manipulates a young guard into leaving his post, unlocks her door with magic, and searches the keep, finding a Chthonic star chart hidden in Cedric's⁷ secret compartment.

Cedric⁷ returns and finds Amma² in his chambers. He seizes her by the throat, calls her a whore, and throws her onto the bed. As he tears at her clothing, promising to share her with his soldiers while he is away, Amma's² terror and rage ignite her arcana. The liathau furniture, carved from her homeland's sacred trees, shudders to life.

The bed's posts sharpen into spikes. The chest of drawers blocks the door. The desk herds Cedric⁷ against the wall. The bed rears back and impales him through the chest, pinning him to the stone. Cedric Caldor⁷ dies impaled on his own vanity, killed by the very trees he clear-cut from Faebarrow. Amma² stares at the body, shaking, as soldiers pound on the door.

Damien,¹ having sacrificed Kaz's⁴ heart to shapeshift into a raven, flies to Brineberth. He infiltrates the keep disguised as a guard, finds Amma² amid the chaos of Cedric's⁷ death, and pulls her aside. When he drops the illusion, she attacks him, then recognizes him and kisses him fiercely.

Their reunion is cut short: the ground ruptures, and a void of pure darkness opens in the courtyard. Black tendrils snatch and crush soldiers. Damien¹ nearly walks into it, recognizing it wants him as a vessel. Amma² refuses to let go. She spots Gilead¹² directing the chaos; Damien¹ wounds him.

With no other escape, Amma² reads a Chthonic summons scroll. A silver-framed portal opens to Yvlcon, the Grand Order of Dread's annual convention. An imp informs them Amma² is unregistered. Damien¹ warns her she must now play the role of his thrall to survive.