Firefinger. A tower of stone stabbing the sky like a knife meant for gods.
We climbed it. Bled on it. Burned for it.
The gnomes had paid us in trinkets and promises, but that was just the opening ante. The real cost was waiting inside. Spiders in the dark, carrion beasts with too many legs, and Stirges that drank hope as fast as blood. I fed them steel and rage. Morthas-my greataxe-sang louder than Bowmore's pipes that night.
At the top, the Pterafolk waited. A whole murder of them, wings spread wide like shadows over the moon. One tried to shove us off the edge-two hundred feet down into nothing. I shoved back with sharpened fury. They screamed; I didn't.
There was a fire up there too-an oven where they baked their prisoners alive. Lori, bless her cow-sized heart, scorched her tail to drag a stranger out of the flames. Balgus rained stars. Bowmore's knives whispered death. And me? I made a mess of feathers and bone until even the fearless were afraid.
By dawn, Firefinger was ours. The hostages freed, the flock broken. I took Whispers and Silence for a little flight of their own. Call it payback. Call it a joke. Either way, their screams echoed nice against the cliffs.
When the dust settled, the gnomes left, the monk vanished, and Mergrim's eyes told me he'd had enough of waiting. Tomorrow we leave, he said. Tomorrow.
But tonight? Tonight the tower sleeps quiet. And so do I-at least until the next nightmare comes calling.
