THE SHINY ROCK HEIST

Based Ben stood at the northern edge of everything and did the math. In front of him was Spite Mountains — three volcanic peaks McEvilface piled up over his own front door like a security system made of geology. Three peaks, one per Shiny Rock. Nobody can prove that isn't why. One guy, one task, zero backup, because his backup had died in a pit with his bare hands around a werewolf's throat. So Based Ben did what people in this story always do instead of therapy: he wrote a song.

It was a farewell song. Very moving. The whole thing was goodbye, my love, I go alone to the fortress of the Dark Lord, do not follow me, remember me fondly. He sang it out loud, to the mountains, in the wilderness, absolutely certain that he was being noble and that he was being it alone.

He was not alone. He was being tailed by a girl in a bat costume riding a dog the size of a horse.

Lucy Slay had heard the song. Of course she had. She and Goodest Boy had already raided the kennels of Werewolf Island after they broke the place open, and they had come away with two trophies: the hide of OG Werewolf, the first werewolf, and the wings of Thuringwethil, Sigmauron's messenger, who got around as an enormous vampire bat. Normal couple's luggage. Goodest Boy wore the wolfskin, which did not fit. Lucy Slay wore the wings. They dropped both at Based Ben's feet and turned back into themselves, and then the argument started.

Goodest Boy, who could only speak three times in his whole life and had now spent all three, went back to being a very large silent dog and stayed behind. He was prophesied to die fighting the greatest wolf in the world, and the greatest wolf in the world was standing at the gate they were about to walk through, so he was being professional about his scheduling.

Based Ben pulled on OG Werewolf's hide and became a werewolf, hunched and stinking. Lucy Slay strapped on the bat wings — still not fitting Goodest Boy, unrelated, still bothers me — and became a shadow with claws. Then the two of them walked down the black road to Hell Basement, which is not a dungeon so much as the one place on the map where the difficulty slider was ripped off and thrown in a volcano.

At the gate: Baddest Boy. The Red Maw. McEvilface had personally bred him and raised him on living flesh specifically because the last gatekeeper situation had embarrassed him, and Baddest Boy was now a wolf the size of a building with fire in his throat and no sleep, ever. He sniffed Based Ben and clocked the costume immediately — dead wolf smell, wrong walk, no OG Werewolf energy at all.

Lucy Slay threw back her hood and hit him with one look and a couple of words, and nobody in this entire book ever writes down what the words actually were, which is my single biggest — anyway, the unsleeping wolf lay down and slept like a puppy in a sunbeam. They stepped over him and went inside.

Down in the throne room, McEvilface was wearing the Shiny Rocks in an iron crown, which he had been doing for centuries even though they burned his hands permanently black, because sunk cost is undefeated. He looked at the bat-shaped intruder and the disguise peeled off her like wet paper. Nobody lies to McEvilface in his own house.

So Lucy Slay pivoted. She said she was a singer, and she had come to offer her service, and would he like a song. And McEvilface — who had a whole speech ready about how she was a tiny helpless thing and he was going to do unspeakable things to her — said yes, because he wanted to enjoy this. McEvilface, buddy. The last thing that sang at your property took an entire island off you. He stopped treating her as a threat and started treating her as entertainment.

She vanished out of his sight and started singing from the shadows. One by one the captains dropped. Then the guards. Then the fire bouncers. Then the fires of Hell Basement guttered out and the hall went dark except for the three Shiny Rocks, which lit up in the blackness like they had been waiting a very long time to be relevant. And they got heavy. Impossibly heavy, on the head of the one person in the world who had no right to them.

McEvilface's neck bowed. His knees went. The first and mightiest thing Eric ever made face-planted onto his own floor, and the crown rolled off his head.

Sing all of Hell Basement asleepCut one Shiny Rock freeKnife snaps on the second oneKnife snaps on the second one

Here is the part that costs him everything. Based Ben cut one Shiny Rock loose with Rock Cutter, the dwarf-knife that could slice iron like lunch meat, and he held it, and the moment it touched his skin he wanted the other two. Not out of greed exactly. Out of that feeling where you clear a level on the first try and think I could do this whole run no-hit. He went back in for number two.

Rock Cutter snapped. SHNK. A shard of the blade flew up and hit McEvilface in the face.

McEvilface groaned in his sleep. All over Hell Basement, sleepers stirred. Two people who had just committed the greatest theft in the history of the world turned and ran for the exit with nothing in their heads but please let me see the sky again.

Baddest Boy was awake at the gate, and he was furious. Based Ben did the only thing he could think of: held the Shiny Rock up in his right hand like a torch. Holy light. Back off. Baddest Boy bit the hand off at the wrist and swallowed it.

Then the Shiny Rock went to work. It is a hallowed thing, and Baddest Boy was not, and so it burned him from the inside with a fire that never went out. He went screaming into the wilderness, insane with pain, and everything alive fled from him in every direction, good and evil alike, because he killed all of it.

Based Ben was bleeding out on the doorstep of hell and Lucy Slay was burning the last of her power to keep him alive when three eagles dropped out of the sky, picked them both up, and flew them home. Nobody in Hell Basement got to file a report. They just woke up with the crown broken and a hole where a Shiny Rock used to be.

Meanwhile Doorlatch Forest had been falling apart. Theo Gatekeep had spent the whole quest realising he had priced his daughter's marriage at "go die," and lost her anyway. Search parties everywhere. He even sent messengers south to Max Onehand, son of Finn, asking for help finding her — which is bleak, given whose gem everyone was fighting over. And Simp Darren the minstrel, who loved her and snitched twice and got her locked in a tree for it, walked out of the story entirely. He wandered east and never came back. That is how that ends.

Then Lucy Slay walked into her father's hall alive, with Based Ben beside her missing a hand. Based Ben told Theo Gatekeep the bride-price was paid: the Shiny Rock was in his hand, he said, and held up the stump. He gave himself a new name for it — Empty-Hand Ben, the Empty-handed.

And Theo Gatekeep, hearing the whole story, finally looked at this mortal and saw someone he could not buy off or scare off, and gave him his daughter.

Goodest Boy did the thing he was born for: he beat the greatest wolf in the world, and the poison killed him anyway, dying beside Based Ben with Based Ben's hand on his head. Mabs Heavyhand cut the wolf open and laid the Shiny Rock in Based Ben's palm, so Based Ben held the thing he crossed the world for while dying of getting it.

Lucy Slay met them on the road. She asked him to wait for her in the halls of Mandy Moodkiller and not go on without her. He looked at her, and then he died.

So she lay down, and her spirit left her body, and she went to Mandy Moodkiller and sang — elven grief and mortal grief braided into one song. It is the only music that ever made a Valor Squad member weep. Mandy Moodkiller went to Manny Breezy, Manny Breezy asked Eric, and the answer came back as a choice: stay in bliss and forget, or go back with Based Ben, both of them mortal, dying for real the second time.