“Damn it!”

He wiped off his face and looked over his shoulder. Lanterns wrapped in heavy canvas and hung from iron pikes gave off a feeble orange glow, illuminating the boat and its complement of sailors and Iron Elves. Konowa cursed the need for any light at all, but the men in the boat did not have elven eyes. Looking beyond the boat he could just make out their starting point, Her Majesty’s seventy-two-gun ship-of-the-line Black Spike. If all went well, they would be back on her decks by nightfall.

Konowa returned his gaze forward. Somewhere ahead of them lay Wikumma Island, the last and southernmost in a chain of seven islands in the Onmedan Sea stretching between Elfkyna and the Hasshugeb Expanse. The six previous islands had been-for lack of a better word-infested with the Shadow Monarch’s growing forest. The small populations that had lived on the islands-mostly fishermen and their families-had been slaughtered by Her forest, leaving not a man, woman, or child alive. Each island was a sun-drenched horror, and Konowa grew angrier with every gruesome discovery.

This had to stop. He had to take the fight directly to the Shadow Monarch. For Konowa, that meant finding the original Iron Elves and marching straight to Her mountain. That She wanted the original elves for Her designs as She wanted Konowa made it all the more crucial Konowa find them first. The power he wielded was incredible, and he was the least magical elf that had ever set foot in a forest. Even some of the human soldiers showed a knack for using the frost fire, albeit with haphazard results. While the power of the blood oath bound every soldier in the regiment, its magical properties resided primarily with its only remaining elf, Konowa. Imagining what the Shadow Monarch could do with a highly trained regiment of elves completely under Her control made even Konowa shudder.