The place stank.

Ragner wrinkled his nose with distaste as he ducked through the narrow, stunted doorway. Mouldy food, stale muskbrew, tattoo ink and rotten meat formed an unpleasant cocktail. The felkin's tail curled and swished, and he whipped a small, white pipe from the pouch resting at the small of his back.

Tamping down some blackened cloveroot leaves into the pipe, he extracted an old, engraved lighter from the pouch and lit it. Orange glowed in the pipe-bowl. Ragner breathed deep, held the spiced smoke in his mouth for a few seconds, and then slowly exhaled. It spilled from his lips and swirled through the air, going some way to assuaging the smell.

Thus armed, Ragner set to work.

Although small by felkin standards, his diminutive frame was a solid mass of muscle and sinew. An armoured black bodywrap covered his torso above a thick kilt, and a folded duelling spear was strapped across his back. Long, coal-coloured headfur bunched into thick braids between his shoulder-blades, and his emerald eyes flickered through the detritus of the cult hideout. A metal tube hung by its strap across one of his shoulders.

His footpaws made only the faintest sounds as he moved. With the pipe clamped between his teeth he wove through the graveyard of Kendris' hopes and dreams. Once upon a time this little hovel had been the hynakin's home, the place where the grand, bloody scheme to overthrow the Conclave had been hatched.

So much for that, Ragner thought wryly.

He was a professional and generally did not play politics, but he was as glad as the next beast that Kendris was dead and buried.

With the remaining cultists either joining him in the Fire or fleeing for their lives, that left Ragner's employer with a unique opportunity. Hynakin were supposed to be extinct – dead relics of a bygone age – but one of them had just waltzed right out of legend and almost destroyed the city. The fact that Kendris existed at all threw up a whole host of questions.

Some kin had the money and the drive to find the answers.

He turned cult literature over in his paws, running a dispassionate eye over the strange verses and trying to decide if they were worth collecting. Some he tossed aside. Others disappeared into the barkhide pouch; not exactly what he'd been sent to find, but interesting in their own right.

Working his way around the roughly circular edges of the room, he shuffled through more of the cult belongings. A handful of cot-like beds were embedded into the walls, presumably where Kendris' bodyguards had slept close to their master. Ragner tore through all of them, using his keen claws to open up pillows and carve up blankets in search of his prize.

He found more dubiously useful pamphlets, some hidden weapons, a bottle of emerald-coloured lasher, but nothing that fitted the description his employer had given him. Part of him had hoped this would be nice and simple – that Kendris would have been careless – but so much for wishful thinking. Time to start thinking in a more paranoid frame.

So Ragner started tapping at the walls, looking for a hidden compartment. He'd done plenty of similar jobs ranging from retrieval to outright theft, and knew the signs. Moving slowly and methodically, he struck lightly with his claws, clack-clack-clacking until he hit something hollow. Ragner stopped dead; allowed himself a smirk.

Turning, he faced the section of wall. It looked normal enough, but looking closer with his expert eye, he could see the faint seam running up and around to form a tall rectangle – a space big enough for someone to walk through. The seam disappeared behind a boxy set of shelves cluttered with knives, clothes and bundles of barkpaper.

He stepped back, sucking thoughtfully on his pipe.

Then something behind him shattered.

Ragner whirled around, pipe falling from his mouth as his reflexes took over. He whipped the duelling spear from its sheathe and with a flick of his wrist, unfolded the weapon, its two halves snapping into place. The burnished iron point shone in the dim light of the cult hideout and he sank into his fighting stance, spear gripped tight on both paws as he faced the intruder.

He felt a jolt of surprise at what he saw. Instead of a bloodthirsty cultist, he found himself staring at a female foxkin. Barely older than a cub, she was a scrawny individual, clad in a ragged bodywrap and kilt that did nothing to hide her emaciated frame. On the floor in front of her was a broken ceramic jug. In her paws she cradled a pile of unspoiled food.

Just a scavenger.

Ragner's shoulders relaxed and he sighed, straightening up and planting the butt of his spear against the ground. She didn't move, her eyes wide and fixed on the blade. He waited for a moment, but she remained there, frozen in terror.

"It's alright," he told her calmly, inclining his head towards the door. "I'm not here for the food. Go."

A few seconds ebbed by, and she continued staring, as though she didn't believe him. Eventually she took a couple of tentative steps, skirting around the edges of the room to stay out of his reach. Ragner waited, watching and ready to spring – just in case. He had no intention of harming the foxkin, but you couldn't be too careful right now.

The scavenger picked up speed as she approached the door, and then with a final flurry of limbs she disappeared out into the corridor. He watched the doorway for a couple of extra seconds to make sure she didn't come back in. Then, tutting, he stooped down to retrieve his pipe. Dusting it off and shaking out the remnants of burnt-leaf, he returned it to his pouch. Then he turned back to the false wall panel.

After mulling for a moment, he reached down, hooking his claws into the tiny gap behind the shelving unit. A small tug and he felt it give just a bit. Something scraped. Taking a deep breath, Ragner braced, set his footpaws and pulled hard. The shelves came away from the wall, swinging out like an opening door, and as they did, the false slab swung inward, linked by some gearing mechanism.

A cough of musty air hit Ragner in the face and he wrinkled his nose, wiping his paws off as he peered into the gloom beyond. The space was little more than a cupboard, littered with half empty bottles, and a desk, chair and computer rig crammed against the right wall. He hesitated for just a moment upon seeing the hidden sanctum.

Reaching forward with his spear, tapping the frame on the top and sides in case of any booby-traps. When nothing materialised, he took a tentative step over the threshold. His eyes wandered over the tiny space, and it didn't take long to find what he'd been looking for.

On the desk, surrounded by reams of gnarled old parchment, was a crisply drawn map. Much newer than the surrounding documents, it had been sketched freepaw, first in charcoal, then ink where the lines darkened, cementing the image there. Ragner slid forward, still wary of setting off a surprise left for unwelcome intruders, but the room remained silent; tomb-like.

"C'mon, Kendris," he murmured. "Be the good kind of crazy."

He could make out some of the text on the accompanying scripts, some of it written in the common tongue, others in older dialects that he understood to varying degrees. Ragner made out references to the hynakin species in there, accounts of the purge of their kind. He recognised the names of old settlements; places long-since razed to the ground in forgotten wars.

It took a few minutes of leafing through the sheets before he spotted the word. The thing he'd been sent to prove existed.

Fierra Moramantine.

The Immortal's Fire.

Ragner exhaled, resisting the urge to reach for his pipe again. He re-read the passage on the delicate piece of parchment several times. Around the main body of the text he could see the notes in Kendris' writing – written in the impenetrable tongue of the Savage Fire that only a few scholars in the city could even begin to translate. It meant nothing to him, but beneath the words 'Fierra Moramantine' were inked a matching series of symbols in that damnable language. A translation, from new into ancient.

Allowing himself to feel a surge of excitement, Ragner turned back to the map.

The annotations on the map were, to his immense frustration, written in the same bizarre script of the Savage Fire, but there was only one phrase he needed to recognise. The map showed the southern half of the continent – he recognised the contours of the coast – and he could see a dark square stamped where the port city of Glimmerhook ought to be. That gave him a reference point at least. He traced it gently with one claw, down to another square about a third of the way from the bottom of the sheet.

Wildhearth. Right where it was supposed to be, labelled with whatever Kendris' translation was. From the city, dotted lines of charcoal snaked their way south, into the great wilds, into a land left behind by beastkin since the founding of the Great Peace.

And there, deep in that unexplored void, Kendris had marked a black circle. Beneath that circle was the hynakin's translation of Fierra Moramantine.

"By the Peace and Fire," Ragner breathed, shaking his head in amazement.

Seizing Wildhearth had never been Kendris' final goal. The entire cult uprising and its carnage had been a stepping stone on the road to this – this strange place hidden in a lost world. The realisation made Ragner's blood chill just a little. Even by his standards this was quite a lot to take in. Proof that the past had not unfolded as they'd been told; that history had been warped by its victors.

Focus on the job.

Ragner nodded to himself, boxing up those existential questions for another day. Slowly, he folded his spear up and returned it to its sheathe, before gathering up the bundle of papers. He handled them with excruciating care, being sure not to damage even a molecule of the evidence. Then lastly – reverently – he rolled up Kendris' map and slid it into the armoured tube his employer had provided for him.

The hynakin had been a brutal soul, but he might yet leave his mark on the world.

Gently looping the strap of the tube back over his shoulder, Ragner gratefully slunk out of the hynakin hide-out, traversing the narrow entranceway and emerging into the light of Wildhearth once more.

*

The bar was a nice place to be right now.

Ragner sipped his ale, sitting at a table in the back corner, one eye lingering on the solar clock above the bartender's head. A rangy, older felkin, she glided back and forth, rebuffing amorous compliments with the long-suffering good nature of someone who would put up with anything to squeeze more stamps out of her patrons.

The doors were open on either side, letting a pleasant cross-breeze fill the space. Ragner breathed deep, his free paw resting on the metal tube as he watched the bustle. Oblivious to the secrets he held, these kin carried on with their lives. Peace, sitting here you'd never have known that a death cult just tried to overthrow Wildhearth's government.

It was quite, remarkable, he decided.

He took another gulp of golden ale and smacked his lips in satisfaction. It was a good local brew, and he felt a twinge of annoyance that he didn't have much longer to sit here and enjoy it. The instructions from his employer had been very clear, and Ragner always followed his instructions. Doing so had let him carve out a very healthy life in Wildhearth, and if that meant holding your nose and carrying out some unpleasant tasks, so be it.

The last of the ale disappeared down his throat, and with a grunt, he levered himself up out of the seat, gathering up his belongings. A few curious eyes flashed in his direction as he walked through the bar, heading straight for the door leading to the back room.

The felkin bartender saw him. Their eyes locked for an instant as he wrapped a paw around the door handle.

She flickered the glimmer of a smile and went back to her work.

Ragner closed the door behind him, muffling the din of the establishment. In the back room, he quickly located the bar's howlwire set and dialled the code he'd been provided.

It buzzed exactly three times, as he'd been told it would, before the line clicked and someone answered.

"Ragner?" rasped a voice.

"It's me," he confirmed.

"As reliable as your reputation."

"Thanks."

"I take it you have the item?"

"Safe and sound, right where you said it would be." He patted the tube absently with one paw.

"Excellent!" Even over the crackling howlwire Ragner could hear the barely suppressed excitement in his employer's voice.

"Someone else needs to look this over," he cautioned. "I'm no expert in ancient languages. The sooner your people can cast an eye on it the better. You don't want to be shipping anybody to the wilds just on my word."

"Of course, of course. Do not worry, Ragner. Bring all of it to me at once, and I'll have it authenticated as soon as possible. You've done an excellent job."

"Glad to hear it." Ragner could feel his tail twitching as the implications of what they'd found pushed into his mind once more. "So, if all of this is really...real, what does that mean?"

"It means we will be one step closer to finding what no-one else has even dreamed of."

Ragner smiled thinly. The enthusiasm was infectious. "If this is what we think it is, we're going to need to put a crew together – a good one."

"Don't worry, Ragner. I know exactly who we need, and you'll be meeting them soon," the voice answered. "Then you and I are going to change the world."