Bag a Legend 28. The Betrayal You leap up the steps, dodging, feinting, ducking and slashing.

Questing stems fall beneath your knife, gnarled vines lash at your ankles, but you simply tear them out by the roots. A Daisy Chain rips the skin from your back, and halfway up the steps a weeping nettle lands a stinging slap across your neck, but nothing can slow your momentum and at last the gauntlet is run. Panting and shaking, trying to ignore the pain, you creep up to the window and peek in... The Scarred Naturalist has company. He sits at a wrought-iron table with a red-haired, impressively moustachioed man. It takes a moment for you to place him. Of course - the fool who ambushed you at the Shuttered Palace, the other Vake hunter! He still bears the marks of your last encounter. "You are ready," the Naturalist says to him. "You have your club, your mandrake, you have tasted the blood of your prey and learned its dreams." "And the Sisterhood?" says Moustache. "Nothing to worry about." The Naturalist smiles unpleasantly. "They are too busy chasing your rival to see the real danger. You must journey north to the Prickfinger Wastes. The Sisters have hidden something... rather valuable there. You have been more than patient with me, Von Schadlinge. Trust me when I tell you that this is the final piece of the puzzle." You reel back from the window. Betrayed! Your heart thumps. Your vision blurs. With a queasy shock, you notice that your arms have sprouted ugly red lumps. This is more than shock - what's happening to you? The world tips like a ship on a high sea and you are tumbling, tumbling from the tower towards the spike-tipped bushes below... ...a refreshing interlude of oblivion... There is a cool hand on your forehead and a bottle at your lips. "Weeping nettle poison," says a low, sweet voice. "Easily cured - lie still." Time passes. You open your eyes and find yourself alone. The lumps on your arms and the pain in your head are gone. Even the bruises from your fall have disappeared. Slowly, the night's events creep back to you. The Scarred Naturalist, in league with a rival hunter. The man with the moustache. Prickfinger Wastes. The last piece of the puzzle. You consider your options for a few moments and come to a decision. North it is, then, to the Prickfinger Wastes. And God help anyone who stands in your way. 29. Prickfinger Wastes The answers you seek lie deep in the Prickfinger Wastes. Whoever came up with that name had a

sour sense of humour. A labyrinth of rock and crystal, the Wastes are deadly to anyone but the most sure-footed. Some ancient geological effect has fashioned every stalagmite into a razor edge. Many a foolish prospector has ventured here, lured by tales of precious gems as commonplace as pebbles on a beach. They return - if they return at all - with their skin in ribbons and no treasure but a handful of worthless geodes. Into The Wastes Blood loss is the greatest threat out here. Brush one stalagmite too many and you'll bleed out long before you make it back to safety. It's dark in the Wastes, beyond the brightly coloured lamps of Mrs Plenty's Carnival. Watch your step.

Visions of The Vake You have no plans for tonight. Why not drink a bottle of a semi-lethal hallucinogen spiked with the blood of a mythical monster, and see what happens? Absinthe sends the hunter yonder Pour yourself a shot. And another. Ah, Black Wings Absinthe! It is deep and black and thick, like the blood of the earth. Like a carpet made of cats. Like the shadow of an idiot. In the beginning... You are sinking into the floor, and the floor is an ocean, and you are falling from the ocean into an endless sky lit up with... stars remember stars above below before the coldest hunting ground then called !seduced! ! ensnared! a symbiote afloat our everhungry home nestled nested now in cedars cast down the benighted i will be their dragon soar and slaughter scratch in blood the memory of stars

Visions of The Vake You have no plans for tonight. Why not drink a bottle of a semi-lethal hallucinogen spiked with the blood of a mythical monster, and see what happens? A cooling draught It is uncomfortably warm in your lodgings. A glass or two of absinthe would be most refreshing. The army camp It feels like flying. You close your eyes and feel the wind on your face, buildings whipping past. And in the distance there are...

fires in the dark fly north beneath our stony shell skim low and silent cross the wastes an army here in silk and fur entrenched and tented sleeping feel my shadow as i cross but do not wake the horses warlike stamp the stones strike sparks good sport for chasing !loose one! let it gallop keeping easy pace hot mind fearful chasing legs exhausted crumples !fall and feast!

Visions of The Vake You have no plans for tonight. Why not drink a bottle of a semi-lethal hallucinogen spiked with the blood of a mythical monster, and see what happens? This really can't be good for you They use to call Absinthe 'the Green Fairy'. This stuff is more like an Ebony Bat. Beneath the Neath Once again, you sink into the blackness. Deeper this time. Deeper than you've ever been... caught incarcerated caged two dozen centuries no space no space to spread my wings ! unbearable! !release me! Spit venom at my judas gaolers may their kohl eyes gender worms may their bones burn in their flesh !unbearable! !release me!

Something tapping at the window You surface from a half-forgotten dream of flying. Tap tap on the glass. Something at the window casts a scythed shadow on the floorboards. You leap out of bed and throw open the casement, but there's nothing there.