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‘Are we still enemies?’

‘I don’t want to be anyone’s enemy. I just want to save my sister.’Advertisement

‘So we have a truce then?’ Goth asked, holding out his enormous hand for Zach to shake.

Zach nodded in agreement and gripping his hand, he said, ‘we have a truce.’

‘Where are you heading now?’ Goth asked.

‘The Rusty Volcano,’ William cut in, joining them at the shoreline.

‘Then I will come with you,’ Marshal Goth insisted. ‘As you know I’m not too bad in a fight. I might be of service to you.’

‘No,’ Zach said.

‘No? The road to the Rusty Volcano is a dangerous one. No one has ever returned.’

‘I appreciate your offer of help, but your people need you more than I do,’ Zach said.

‘It won’t take Throat long to work out what happened here tonight. Then he will hunt me and my people down. Where should I take them?’ Goth asked.

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‘Take them to the Snowstorm Mountains,’ William told him. ‘My people are there. You’ll be safe with them.’

‘I will come with you Norsori,’ Henry the Cathedral Knight roared, swooping around them. ‘My fellow Knights and I will no longer be safe in the Grey-yard.’

‘And what about me?’ Captain Bom said brushing sand from his overgrown eyebrows.

‘Why, you’re coming with us!’ Neanna beamed. ‘You’ve got my back – remember!’

With an uneasy smile tugging at the corners of his lips, Captain Bom said, ‘I can’t wait to get going.’

With an hour of darkness before the blistering sun rose above them, they split into two groups and walked away in opposite directions along the shore. The Norsori and the Cathedral Knights unlikely allies as they raced towards the safety of the Snowstorm Mountains like a trail of refugees.

With the key to the box, Zach and his friends began the long and dangerous journey across Endra to the Rusty Volcano. Although to the passing stranger, they looked like a rag-tag group of misfits, all but one of them had a common goal; to save the Queen and her reflection and restore peace to Endra. The other? They wanted something else altogether. pqdm.com