An unbonded knight traveling as a "free lance" meets more than his share of trouble when he signs on with Lord Big Nose to recover a crown from the Lake of Skulls.
Quint finally begins his training at the Knights Academy, Maris adjusts to life in Undertown, and Sanctaphrax shivers in anticipation of a legendary storm, while a storm of a different kind brews between sky-scholars and earth-scholars.
Fleeing from the ruins of New Undertown, Rook Barkwater and the librarian knights and Felix Lodd and his banderbear friends must lead the escaping population to a new life in the Free Glades.
Apprenticed to the Most High Academe of Sanctaphrax, a floating city of scholars, gossip, and treachery, fourteen-year-old Quint runs increasingly dangerous errands, which eventually bring him to a place of gruesome monsters that threaten his life and those of his friends.
In his continuing adventures, Twig, now sixteen years old, joins the crew of his father's sky pirate ship and embarks on a dangerous mission to collect the powerful stromphrax, a substance that purifies water and also prevents the city of Sanctaphrax from floating away.
Thirteen-year-old Twig, having always looked and felt different from his woodtroll family, learns that he is adopted and travels out of his Deepwoods home to find the place where he belongs.
Rabbit, a day creature, misses his friend Hedgehog, a night creature, terribly during the daytime. But an unexpected turn of events brings the two of them together for a whole day.
