"Why do they call it subjugation?" Alarion asked, his fingertips drifting beside him in the warm swells of the early morning sea. The menial tasked with rowing them to the nearby Forest Isle had rightly ignored the question, as he had the half dozen previous inquiries that had jumped to Alarion's mind during their short voyage.

As the only other occupant of the boat, Sierra was not so lucky.

"Why would they not?" She asked after briefly considering the question. "What do the Ashadi call it?"

Alarion considered momentarily as he searched his mind for the best comparable word. "…Hunting?"

"Hunting?" Sierra scoffed, "Of fiends? Alarion, what do you know about fiends?"

"To avoid them," He replied honestly. "One family I… stayed with had a large and successful farm. Then one day, the groundwater came up black from the well, and the whole family moved overnight. They didn't tell us what happened. They didn't even take the time to…"

"To release you." Sierra finished his unspoken thought as Alarion suddenly renewed his interest in the seawater lapping at the boat's side. She visibly bristled at the subject, but stayed on topic. "They were wise to flee. Do you know how a fiend differs from a regular monster?"

Alarion pondered, thinking back to his conversations with ZEKE. "Some monsters descended from people. Fiends didn't?"

"No, they did not," she agreed. "But the main difference is in their drive. Monsters do all sorts of things. Some hide away, others will defend their lairs, or even seek out items of strange significance. Fiends have only one drive. To kill and reclaim. They do nothing else."

"Reclaim?" Alarion frowned at the word. It sounded unpleasant.

"A fiend infestation starts as a boil," she explained, "A sickness in the world, like pus from an infected wound. It poisons the soil and the water for a league or more in every direction as it spreads. Then eventually it bursts at the center and starts producing fiends. In ones and twos, then tens and twenties. These fiends have only two goals. First, they kill everything they see. Second, any body larger than an insect and smaller than a dog, they will drag back to the boil, to feed it and produce more of their kind."

"Which just means they can kill and reclaim even more," Alarion murmured, instantly seeing the problem. "What happens to the people they kill?"

"Larger game, particularly humans, are reclaimed differently," Sierra continued, disgust clear on her face. "The boil infests the weak; they are reanimated as its shambling legions. Weaker than the fiends, but able to drastically bolster their numbers. The strong, humans with class levels, intelligent Systemborn, and others are instead brought back as Revenants, leaders of the fiends and reanimated alike."

"They need corpses to lead them?" Alarion asked with some confusion.

"Revenants are not just corpses. I have never seen one, but I have been told they are as lifelike as you or I. Just… changed."

"So the fiends themselves are not very smart?"

"Cunning. But not smart," Sierra replied. "Individuals vary wildly. A starved boil will produce fiends so weak and clumsy that even you can fight them, but as they get stronger, that can change. Some will always be brutes, others skilled ambush predators or swarm combatants. My father once explained it as the difference between tactics and strategy. Fiends can win a battle, Revenants a war."

"Subjugation." Alarion repeated the word, his mind drifting as the conversation came full circle. "Not hunting."

Sierra smiled. "You get it. A handful of Awakened can subdue an early boil. Perhaps even a cadre of unawakened, if they are incredibly swift. Once it develops, a boil can be a nation unto itself. Such a challenge does not require hunters, but a well-constructed and organized response. Overwhelming force. Subjugation."

"If you're about done with your lesson," The middle-aged laborer interjected as he gestured to the island some hundred feet away, "This is as close as I'll be taking you."

"You were instructed to take us to the island," Sierra protested.

"And I have. There is the island," the man replied. He pointed again, this time with one oar. "I am not beaching myself on an island full of fiends because you are too good to wade through the shallows."

Sierra opened her mouth to protest when Alarion stood awkwardly beside her. The young man took care not to disrupt the precarious balance of the small boat as he collected his small satchel of belongings, hung it from the tip of his greatsword, and stepped off into thigh-high seawater.

"We should get going," He declared, holding the boat steady with an elbow as he offered his free hand to her.

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With a reluctant and undignified grumble, Sierra took the offered hand. She slid from the boat into the water beside Alarion, and the two began the long trudging march toward the beach.

"Should we be quieter?" Alarion asked, though the lap of noontide waves masked their awkward sloshing.

Sierra shook her head. "They will know we are here already, but the fiends on this island are weak. Malnourished and disorganized. They have long since killed anything worth consuming and have withdrawn their best back to the boil and the surrounding nodes. The ones outside will attack an obvious target but will not waste energy trying to hunt down a strange noise."

"This boil isn't new?" Alarion asked before he realized how inane the question was. They'd steered far clear of the island on their approach weeks earlier, and he'd seen things moving in the trees even then. "Why don't they leave?"

Sierra dipped her hand into the water as they walked, scooping up a palm full and letting it trickle out between her fingers. "Salt water."

Alarion gave her a look.

"I am serious!" She protested against his skepticism. "No one knows why, but they will not cross salt water. Some think it purges the infection, while others have talked about sympathetic ties to the boil being disrupted. Whatever the reason, they can not or will not. It has kept Vitria safe for generations and halted the Eisborne Calamity."

"So you just… keep them here?"

"Technically, you did," Sierra pointed out, clarifying as she saw his befuddled expression. "The Trinity Isles belonged to an Ashadi noble house until only recently, and the boil here is positively ancient. Nearly as old as the manor, I'm told. If not older."

Alarion splashed the last few steps onto shore, then turned back as he asked the next obvious question. "Why?"

"Us? Or them?" Sierra replied.

"Both?"

"We keep them for this exact situation." Sierra gestured at his oversized sword. "Islands like this are a rare opportunity. Left to starvation, they give the scions of wealthy or powerful families a place to test their mettle in actual combat on demand. If properly fed, they can even be a place for the powerful to hone their skills."

"That sounds a lot like a game preserve," Alarion mused. "Like the sort of place one might hunt."

Sierra barked a genuine laugh at having the conversation turned back on her. "Fair. A good point. Think of this as more of an exception to the rule. There is no need for subjugation if they are trapped."

"And well fed." Alarion scowled. "Why did the Ashadi keep it?"

"Hmm?" Sierra asked, her cloak in hand as she vainly attempted to dry her lower body. "I am not sure. I do not know that anyone is. They could have used it for the same purpose, but there are… rumors."

Alarion raised an eyebrow.

"Nothing of substance," Sierra was quick to clarify. "Stories about laboratories in the manor house when it was first taken. Or odd religious or cultural icons. Just gossip among the long-term staff."

"Mm."

Picking up on his less-than-enthusiastic response, Sierra turned the conversation to the task at hand. "Before we continue, what are the three rules?"

Alarion sighed. "Do not pass the guide stones. Do not start a fire."

"And?"

Alarion gave her a look.

"I need to hear you say it," she persisted.

"Listen to Sierra if she gives you an order," Alarion reluctantly replied, "And only if she gives you an order."

"You added that last part in." The girl scowled. "Why are these important?"

"The guide stones are at a mile radius around the north of the island, warning of the boil's location. If I cross past them, I risk fighting fiends that are beyond my ability to defeat. And being heavily injured or dying."

She nodded. "That is one."

"If I set the island on fire, either by accident or on purpose, it might cover the entire island and ruin it as a training ground. And also, we may die in the fire."

"And?" Sierra pressed.

"I do not know why the third rule was put in place."

Sierra scowled.

Alarion sighed, his voice and cadence shifting slightly to mimic Elena. "Sierra is far more experienced and less stubborn. If she thinks an idea is bad enough to give you an order, she is correct."

"Thank you," Sierra said with a smile that was too sweet by half. "That all said, I am to follow your lead and stay out of the way unless you are at risk of being killed. So, which way?"

Alarion considered the question, casting his eyes up and down the beach. "I don't see any footprints, and they didn't come to meet us. They don't come onto the beach?"

"They can, though mostly at night," Sierra replied, clearing up his misconceptions. "The salt water does not hurt them, if that is what you are thinking. It is just that the tree line offers them cover, shade, and places to hide. They'll follow us out if provoked, or attack us at night if we look vulnerable."

"No real chance of fighting them in the open, then." Alarion frowned as he scanned the tree line and set out for the nearest pathway further inland.

From their boat, the island's greenery had seemed an almost impenetrable wall. The gaps were more substantial up close, particularly once they breached the initial foliage. The island's trees were tall and slender, white barked and topped with green, but nearly devoid of lower branches to impede the two as they walked. They grew in unusual groupings, thickets of five to ten trees bunched close to one another, their roots intertwined. Between each group, there were gaps where other lesser foliage grew, areas through which Alarion and Sierra could easily pass, albeit in an odd switchback pattern, never in a straight line.

"This doesn't feel natural," He remarked after a few minutes of their odd side-to-side progression through the wilderness.

"I was thinking the same," Sierra confessed. "There are small signs of infestation in the foliage, but nothing so bad as to cause this odd pattern. Maybe they were planted this way?"

"The trees are sick?" Alarion asked with a measure of surprise. "I've been looking-"

"Look down," Sierra told him, gesturing to the roots of a nearby copse of trees. "See the thin lines of black in the roots?"

He didn't at first, but that didn't stop Alarion from nodding along until they drew closer and she could trace one with a gloved fingertip.

"This far out, the blight is weak because the boil is starved. Closer in, you will see what it does to the surrounding foliage when it poisons it in earnest. A good rule of thumb is that blight infection will always be the worst closest to the gro-"

The snap of a downed branch brought Sierra up short and sent Alarion whirling to face its source. Too far away to be either of them, it echoed off the otherwise silent forest.

No. Not echoed. It was louder the second time.

It repeated.

Something was getting closer.

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