Flames danced on a wooden frame. Emerald flashes burned Rowan’s eyes, and he strained to shut them, to drown out the heat from the flames that crackled all around him, but his body would not listen.

Recognizing the dream he was in, Rowan intensified his efforts to move, but no matter how he strained, he could not force his body to move even a muscle. He was stuck in place, waiting for what came next.

Soon the giant came leaping through the flames, his face panicked as he scooped Rowan up into his arms. Just like last time, his lips moved, but no sound emerged, at least none that Rowan could hear, and the two moved in silence, the only noise that of the flames and bursts of emerald and violet that shattered the air behind them.

Unable to move, Rowan took the time to inspect the giant carrying him. Just as it had been the time before, he was gravely injured. His left arm hung uselessly by his side, rendered unusable by the attack that had pulped his left elbow. Blood dripped from a multitude of cuts upon his face and shoulders, bleeding into the remnants of a reddish-brown beard, dyeing it a dark crimson that shone wetly in the firelight.

In truth, it was a rather fearsome visage, the sort of giant that legends spoke of, an eater of beast and men alike. But surprisingly, Rowan felt safe in his arms. Something, call it intuition, told him that the giant meant him no harm. Not that he could escape even if he wanted to. Although function was slowly returning to his body, it was limited to the slight movement of the head, the tiniest twitch of his limbs, and the fluttering of his eyelids, nothing that would allow him escape from the clutches of this enormous man.

Darkness overtook them, the flames disappearing into the distance as they loped through the desert. Around them, familiar scrubland appeared, the outskirts of Taureen now recognizable to Rowan as he gazed out at them. Above, the giant’s breathing grew haggard, but his pace did not slow, and the gnarled trees and twisted tumbleweeds that surrounded them sped by at a startling speed.

“Who are you?” Rowan wanted to ask. Why are you showing me this? Is this really just a dream, or is it more? These questions had haunted him since the last time he had seen this scene, several months ago following the admission test. It felt like far more than a mere dream, the scene too lifelike and real to be a figment of his imagination, but he had no recollection of any of the events that passed within it. It was as if he was looking at someone else’s memories, watching passively as they were whisked away in the dead of night.

A bolt of crimson light flashed by, followed immediately by one of emerald, distracting Rowan from his thoughts. Above, the giant’s eyes glowed amber, and Rowan’s breath caught as the mana around them condensed, his lungs constricting as the mana gathered.

The last time he had felt this sensation, he had still been too green to understand the true meaning behind it. Now he had received training as a mage, and he understood just how much power the giant had gathered in order to crush his foes. The amount of mana needed to disrupt the surroundings was immense, and the level of magical ability required to wield such mana was even moreso. Whoever the giant was, his talents were without a doubt on the level of the prodigious elites the world.

Rowan blinked. For such an entity to exist near Taureen and be unknown was nearly impossible. People talked, and the common folk and nobles alike loved gossip in all its forms.

Giants were rare, and giants with the powers this one had showed even moreso. For a giant mage of such talents to display his powers in this manner would surely have attracted attention, and attention meant gossip. But Rowan had no recollection of such a tale, or such events ever occurring around the town he had lived in all his life. Did that mean that these events took place long ago?

Or perhaps he died here, and his name was lost to time. An insidious voice whispered. Recoiling, Rowan attempted to ignore it, but the seed of doubt had been planted. Could this powerful man really have died and been forgotten so easily?

Casting his gaze upwards, Rowan felt the blood drain from his face. The giant was looking down at him, but his face was shifting, changing before his eyes. The beard was first to go, morphing into grey hair that raced to cover the rest of the face, his nose elongating and his teeth growing sharper as the bearded visage was replaced by that of a ratman that Rowan knew too well.

Rowan! Lekaar psychically screamed, his soundless words piercing Rowan’s skull. His voice was harsh, like a thousand knives clawing on a chalkboard, and Rowan’s face twisted in pain as the words resounded within his mind. Why did you let me die, Rowan?!

The giant’s dark green eyes had now morphed into the beady eyes of Lekaar, but where there should have been colour, instead, a pair of dark voids stared out at Rowan from the sockets where his eyes should have been. Still frozen in horror, Rowan watched as blood began to fall like rain from the obsidian holes in Lekaar’s face, streaking the fur with crimson as the voids of his eyes threatened to swallow him whole within their inky embrace.

Feeling himself falling within the black, Rowan shut his eyes to it all, but the vision of Lekaar’s bloodstreaked face and those two terrible voids still shone brightly in the darkness, its mouth opening to deliver one last terrible line.

Why did you kill me, Rowan?

~

With a start, Rowan awoke, gasping for air as the events of the dream lingered within his mind. Hand going to his jaw, he felt the soft flesh, newly healed by the magic of Faebrook’s healers. He had come to bed in an attempt to get some rest, and to avoid thinking about the events of the day, but it appeared that even in his dreams, he was not safe from the thoughts that plagued him.

Closing his eyes, Rowan attempted to return to sleep, but a vision of Lekaar, his eye-voids oozing blood forced him to jerk them back open immediately.

“Gah!” His breathing harsh, Rowan sat up in bed, his hands clutching at the bed sheets. In the next bed, someone stirred, and Rowan winced, doing his best to stay quiet. It would do him no good to wake his dorm mates. He did not want to have to explain why he was having loud nightmares in the middle of the night, certainly not to people who could never come close to understanding what it was he had just been through.

Calming his breathing, Rowan rolled out of bed, padding over to the window and pushing it open. As the cool breeze washed over him, he gazed out at the grounds below. He was not sure when he would be ready to return to sleep, but it definitely was not now.

Well if I’m up, I might as well make the most of it. Abandoning the window, Rowan grabbed his history book, padding softly down the stairs to the common room. The place was empty at this time of night, and the remnants of last night’s fire glowed gently in the fireplace. Stirring them back into wakefulness, Rowan relaxed in the chair, tugging open the book to where he had left off.

A small noise caused Rowan’s ear to twitch, alerted instantly to the presence of a newcomer. Though it was not against the rules to be in the common room this late at night, it was certainly unusual. Rowan quietly shut his book, slinking out of his chair and into the shadows at the corner of the room. Thus concealed, Rowan watched for the source of the sound, the room quiet save for his muted breathing.

Even if it was not against the rules to be up so late, he had no desire to explain why he was up at this time, nor did he want to talk to people right now, so soon after the traumatic scene in his dream. He had come down here to be alone and take his mind off of things, not to socialize with any other night owls who happened to be awake.

For a moment, nothing happened, and Rowan began to think he had imagined the noise. But then, another creak rang out, almost imperceptible, but loud enough to the trained ears of one who had spent years as a lookout on the streets of Taureen. Focusing his attention on the end of the room, Rowan watched as slowly the door to the common room was pushed open, a slim figure sliding inside and quietly shutting the door behind her.

She came from outside? Rowan frowned. Although students were permitted and often even encouraged to burn the midnight oil in the comfort of the dormitory, where it was assumed they would use the time for studying, the academy was quite strict about enforcing the midnight curfew. No students were allowed out on the grounds past midnight, and yet the figure in front of him was only just now coming in three hours after that time.

Pausing for a beat, the figure froze as she looked at the fire, still burning this late at night. Her head swiveling, she looked around the room, but failed to notice Rowan in his hiding spot. Seemingly content that she was alone, the figure glided towards the stairs, her footsteps feathery soft against the thick carpet below.

With a start, Rowan recognized the newcomer, his body going even more still as he waited for her to pass. Though she had been hidden in shadow by the door, as she passed the chair he had been sitting in, the light of the fire had illuminated her features, allowing Rowan a glimpse of her identity at last. Fifteen feet from where he hid, Morgana Lunythe tiptoed past, her cheeks rosy from the cool air outside.

With a surprised expression, Rowan stared at her, his eyes narrowed so as not to reflect any of the firelight. Of all the people he had expected to be sneaking around after curfew, Morgana had not been one of them. No matter what one might think about her attitude, she had always stuck to the rules in class. For her to be out at this time was a shock.

And also none of my business, Rowan reminded himself sternly. In front of him, Morgana continued to make her way quietly across the room, her progress agonizingly slow to the trained thief in the shadows.

After what seemed like forever, she disappeared through the door to the girl’s dormitory, leaving Rowan standing statue-like in the corner. Deciding that no good could come of remaining in the common room, Rowan too crept up the stairs, his footsteps wraithlike as he contemplated what he had just seen.

Why was Morgana sneaking around at three in the morning? Unable to figure out the answer, Rowan headed back to bed. There would be time to figure this out in the morning, provided he made it there in one piece.

~

A night of sleep did little to help Rowan’s mental state—his dreams full of Lekaar’s screams and Klou’s parting threat. It was with a pale face that the morning found him, his outlook grim as he thought about what he had done the day before.

He had insulted a noble, and not just insulted, but called him a dishonourable coward and a disgrace. There was no way any noble—let alone one of the proud beastmen from the south—would take this lying down.

“You could’ve just left it,” Rowan muttered to himself, motioning with his hands in the air above his bed. “Just let it be and gone on with your life like you’ve always done before. But nooooo… You had to play the hero. Ugh.”

Despite his regrets, Rowan had meant everything he had said. Klou’s behaviour within the dungeon had been despicable, and his party only enabled it. The jackalman definitely needed to be taught a lesson; Rowan just wished it hadn’t been him that had attempted to do it.

Maybe it’s not so bad. Just avoid partying with people from House Lykia and lay low. I mean it’s not like I personally killed Onder or Lekaar—I just blamed their deaths on his ineffectual leadership. Would he really hold that against me?

Burying his face into his pillow, Rowan let out a muffled scream. Three months laying low now ruined because he just had to open his stupid mouth. With an agonized sigh, he tossed the pillow aside, meeting Droon’s concerned eyes as he stared at him from the end of the bed.

“Yes?” Rowan asked, doing his best to smooth over the awkward feeling that hung in the air between them. Putting on a bright smile, he stared Droon down, acting as if nothing was the matter and he had not just been caught attacking his own pillow.

“Oh,” Droon replied. “Uh, Captain Faenor wants you.”

“Who?”

Droon rolled his eyes. “Verking Faenor, the strongest guy in our house, and the captain of our dungeoneering team. Which you told me you weren’t trying out for, by the way.”

“I’m not,” Rowan replied absent-mindedly, his thoughts still stuck on the issue with Klou. “Why does he want me, do you know?”

“You tell me,” Droon shot back. “Isn’t it because he wants to set up your tryout date?”

Rowan blinked, finally taking a moment to properly look at Droon. The boy’s lower lip was trembling, and his hands were balled into fists. Running back through the conversation in his mind, Rowan stared strangely at the other boy. Is he mad at me?

“I told you, I’m not trying out,” Rowan replied placatingly. He did not need Droon as a friend, but he had made enough enemies for today. “Whatever the captain wants me for, it has nothing to do with the team, I promise you.”

As he said this, Rowan suddenly paled, his mind at last putting two and two together.

As the nominal head of House Draigwyn, Verking Faenor usually wouldn’t even bother to give an unimportant first year scholarship student like Rowan the time of day, much less call him for a friendly chat. Given that he was still a scholarship student and still a first year, the only thing that had changed was his level of importance, and the only significant event that he had been a part of recently that could have changed that was his altercation with Klou, a noble.

Because I didn’t have enough to worry about, now my own house wants me to apologize. Rowan exhaled slowly. He had already been prepared to apologize to the proud jackalman if that was what it took to smooth things over. He had learned early on the uselessness of ephemeral concepts such as pride or dignity.

Pride had never granted him a roof to sleep under, nor a fire to keep him warm, and dignity had never filled his belly, or closed the wounds that bled. Neither were of any use to those who spent every day just trying to survive. If he had to abandon them in order to continue living a peaceful life at Faebrook, Rowan would do so, but he had hoped to use it as a last resort.

While he might not have held any stock in such concepts, he knew that nobles did, and their perception of him would be altered by the actions he took. A quiet apology in some solitary part of the academy would allow him to escape with his reputation intact. A public prostration would strip him of all dignity and cause others to look down upon him as pathetic for submitting himself to such humiliation.

Unlike pride, reputation was something as useful for street rats as it was for nobles, and Rowan knew that the loss of it was something that could hurt his prospects dearly. He would have to handle this situation very carefully if he wanted to escape with his reputation intact.

While Rowan cursed at Verking for his meddling, Droon was looking much happier after Rowan’s declaration. “So you’re not trying out for the team?”

“What? No,” Rowan said frustratedly, swinging his legs out of bed. “Trust me, I don’t need any more drama in my life right now.”

Droon grinned. “Alright, I’ll trust you, so I’d better not see your name on the board next month.”

“If you do, it’ll be my eulogy,” Rowan promised.