The Living Legends have their headquarters in Cavaan. That alone is reason enough to never tread foot in that dreadful place.

- Comment from Vycar in regards to the city of Cavaan

Something hurt. It stung like Brynn had just caught me swearing and decided to dig deep to try and get me to stop, only the pain went deep into my arm in a way he had never inflicted on me. It woke me up in an instant and the painful clarity did little to reduce the headache such a sudden awakening tended to bring on.

“Agh, bitch!” I yelled and blindly shoved whatever was on my arm away, immediately regretting it when the pain pulsed to new heights. My hands met something warm and heavy, and I ended up pushing me away from it more than the other way around. Blinking rapidly to adjust to the daylight coming in from outside, I scrambled out of the bedroll and to my feet, only to miss a step when my right arm flared in pain again and fall back to the ground.

Stillness descended back into the tent, and I took a moment to take stock of my most recent memories.

Right. The battle and the wound. Weldon would be able to fix that as soon as I saw him. But first, what was in my bedroll?

Ah. It was Jevi. Decently clothed, thank the Gods. On top of the bedroll as well, while I had just extracted myself from underneath. Her limbs were spread like a bird in flight, and an arm and a leg were resting where I had just been. That probably had something to do with the pain that woke me up.

I… wasn’t sure what to think. Growing up in Veliki I’d never really had anyone close enough to share a bed with beyond my mom and dad, and the last time I’d done that was near on a decade ago. I never even had any friends that I allowed close enough that they might see my sleeping face, or I theirs.

It struck me that Jevi was still sleeping even after my attempted shove. The reminder of my physical prowess cut deep, but was overshadowed by curiosity.

Jevi looked relaxed. I’d never seen that expression on her before. It was usually a scarcely contained excitement, a cold and calculating seriousness, or a sparkling kind of honest greed.

Speaking of greed, the hem of Jevi’s dress was hiked up enough that her knees were on display. Above that on her left leg, half covered by the fabric of her dress and the bedroll, was a metal band of a pale blue colour. A mundane pattern familiar to me covered its surface in a subtly paler blue, to the point that it was almost white. Said pattern I recognised from Antar’s lessons on the spell nondetection, and I knew was a foundational part of the spell which matched what Jevi had told me about the band.

It was cold to the touch, and the moment the tips of my fingers made contact with it I felt a tug on my magic not too dissimilar to what I felt when meditating on rezan. Only this was a pull where that was a push, and both effects moved my magic in the same direction.

I frowned and focused out of sheer curiosity, trying to identify what twists of magic the band made once the power it asked of me passed beyond my skin. I rested my palm against it so I wouldn’t have to worry about my fingers straying from the metal, and to have a wider area to observe the magic. It was for naught, though. The moment the magic in me was no longer inside, my perception of it vanished.

As an experiment, I closed my eyes and called my magic back from the manacle still on my wrist, which only took a moment. Then I placed that magic where the tug was the strongest and waited to see what happened.

“I knew you couldn’t keep your hands away from it.” Jevi’s voice broke my reverie.

My eyes cracked open and beheld Jevi’s grinning face. I blinked, then glanced to where my hand was on her thigh. A memory of Jevi calling the bandits that first took this band ‘perverts’ flashed through my mind. Her skin was warm on either side of the cold band.

Carefully, and pointedly ignoring my warming face, I lifted my hand away. “You woke me up.”

“Did I now?” Jevi yawned, not taking the effort to cover her mouth as she did.

I tentatively covered my wound. “You did indeed.”

Jevi’s eyes darted to where I was protecting myself and back to my cooling expression. At least she had the decency to wince. “Apologies. I wasn’t thinking.”

“You were sleeping.”

“Yeah, but I know my habits. Should’a thought about that. Morning, by the way.”

“In my bed.” I continued, deadpan, as if she hadn’t spoken.

“Well…” Jevi’s lilting tone clearly said she didn’t agree. I braced myself for the unreasonable argument that was undoubtedly on its way. “This is technically chief Waar’s bed, so you’re just as guilty as me.”

“I do not recall you already sleeping in it when I lay down.” I said bitterly. “In fact, I do not even remember going under the sheet.” Was it a sheet? It was a bedroll. Should I call it a duvet like the expensive bed coverings from back home? Regardless, my point was made.

“You looked cold.” Jevi said without any of the playfulness I’d come to expect from her. This reminded me of how she spoke when she found out I was wounded. “So I decided you could use a little extra warmth.” And then she ruined it. “Plus, I never had a sleepover growing up and the inn didn’t count. I saw my chance and I took it.”

“What’s a- that’s stupid. Forget I asked.” A sleepover obviously involved going over to someone else’s place to sleep. Evidently it involved sleeping in the same bed. Suddenly dozens of memories where I overheard dad yelling ‘no sleepovers!’ at the Shepards started making sense.

My heart panged. I missed him already.

Jevi sat up suddenly. “Kinli’s nips, did you not have any sleepovers either?”

I frowned at her, not willing to play this game.

“You didn’t.” She realised with no small amount of disbelief. “You’re the one that’s social class. How in all the Nine Hells did you not have any sleepovers?”

“I’m going to find Weldon so I can end this pain.” I announced as I pulled myself to my feet. I noticed my dagger and sword had been arranged near the bed along with my bag and other possessions. The only thing I paused for was my sword, which I fully intended to reinvest with rezan and use to get this fucking manacle off of my wrist.

“Ah. Wait!” Jevi tried to stand but tripped on the bedroll. I was already outside by the time she found her feet.

\V/

We gathered quite the haul from Waar’s little bandit tribe. Waar was stockpiling a fair amount of coin that Jevi and I were going to split between ourselves, with only a pittance going to Weldon, seeing how his payment of ‘justice served’ was enough for him going by what he said when asked. However, there was too much to carry, and most of it was in coppers and silvers. Rather than count it all out and split it immediately, I shoved the sacks into my bag and declared we’d do that the first time we had some privacy in the next town.

Jevi watched the coin much like a raven watched shiny things. It was only once I got her mind out of the gutter and pressed my sword against her throat after adding several scratches to her face that she stopped wasting time on the coin. She and Weldon had already stripped the camp for the most valuable things that could be carried, and then it was only a matter of picking the things we could be bothered carrying to the next town and selling.

In all honesty, I felt all that was a close to pointless waste of time. Jevi had lingered here overnight after spending the day without her protection against divination, and who knew if that crisis had called Avien to turn around. The sooner we moved the better. We had already taken all the coin available here anyway.

Yet Jevi still insisted on arranging all the swords side by side and going over each one to find a weapon that suited her. Then when the one she picked out didn’t have a matching scabbard. In the end she sulkily picked up the one she used to kill Waar the night before, still a little red with blood.

Waar’s massive axe was left where it fell, seeing how it was too large to use.

Lacking anything better to do, I topped up on my travel rations from their stores and had Weldon heal the last of my injuries. The dirty bandages were thrown in a still burning fire that was much larger than the one I remembered from the night before.

We didn’t eat breakfast there. The smell of burning flesh was too off-putting. I don’t think I would’ve been able to stomach anything regardless.

Travel after that was awkward. Alone, I’d been free. I’d let my eyes linger on features in the terrain and basked in the sun when the clouds let it through. With Jevi, I’d been constantly sparring wits, and it hadn’t been as tiring as I felt it should’ve been. Now with Weldon and Jevi walking on either side of me, things were tense in a way that was new to me and very much not welcome.

Jevi had questions that she wanted to ask me about Weldon that she didn’t want to ask him directly. Everything she could’ve ascertained from talking directly to him she had clearly already asked, and it clearly had not been enough to clear away all suspicion. It was strange, considering how forthcoming Weldon had been at Veliki, but that also wasn’t really my problem.

The real problem stemmed from how Jevi wanted to ask me about my Chosenness, and since she had the decency to not spill those details in front of someone else, she chose to emanate frustration instead. I sympathised. She also had a lot more to say that I wanted to hear, regardless of how honest she ended up being.

Weldon, on the other hand, was eagerly telling me about the adventures he had in the brief time we’d been apart. He’d made it to Breach before me somehow, where he’d asked around and come across a bounty for Waar’s bandits. Since he’d recently come into formidable power, as Weldon put it, he decided this would be an adequate test of his power.

He regaled Jevi and me with stories about how he went from person to person getting second hand accounts on all the bandits had done. Apparently they’d been terrorising the countryside for a few months, and had filled the gap in power that had been there ever since the last Chosen One came through to go to Veliki. Not counting Weldon, of course.

When he was done I told him he failed the test spectacularly and was only still living because Jevi and I happened to be there, which made the boy introspective for about the first time since I’d met him. That was all well and good. It meant he’d think twice before jumping head first into danger next time. But it also meant the conversation stopped.

I spent a little time wondering which Chosen One Weldon had been referring to. Then I gave up. There were so many in Veliki that I’d never been able to keep track. Whoever this new Chosen One was, I’d never met them.

It wasn’t like the walk was silent. It was just that anything that was said was of so little significance I barely remembered what it was after five minutes had passed. Meal times were better, since Weldon had a number of divine stories likely sourced from his angelic sword to fill our ears with. Only Jevi and I weren’t the type to get invested in those.

Through the entire trip Jevi and Weldon kept each other at arm’s length while trying to get into my good graces. I could see a genuine desire to be nice in Weldon’s eye from time to time, but he was kept away by Jevi never leaving my side. It was a dynamic I’d never experienced before and it was one I’d live happily to my death never experiencing again. I couldn’t reprimand Jevi because I wasn’t able to tell if she was doing it on purpose or not. A headache formed after the first day and persisted longer than it was welcome.

I was briefly saved when a convoy came upon us from behind, and Jevi managed to negotiate brief passage aboard a carriage. As much as I wished for something interesting to happen, nothing did. Save for a brief encounter with a lone dire wolf that was driven off while we were asleep. We parted ways when the road forked and the convoy was headed to the north east, the opposite way from where we were going.

Of course, that just meant things went back to how they used to be. It took me all of five minutes to get tired again.

But eventually the road came to its destination. The nearest centre of civilisation to Breach and where Ram had suggested I go. A riverside village called Source where we would be able to book passage to any of the major cities of Kreg’uune.

“Finally!” Jevi proclaimed as a wide river came into view. She was the only one to say that out loud, but I agreed with the sentiment. It felt like Weldon did as well.

I’d seen large bodies of water in motion before thanks to nature casters showing off in Veliki, but I’d never seen one that didn’t have a definitive starting point. The river that I was looking at now was wider by an order of magnitude from the largest ‘river’ I’d seen in Veliki.

Stretching across the water from the other side was a menagerie of stone brick and wooden buildings. Nothing was uniform, from the shape, to the colour, to the length of the attached platforms, as well as the floating vessels- ships- strapped into position by ropes I could barely make out from this distance. There were rectangular buildings, domed buildings, buildings that looked as though they were built on an angle, and others that just looked like ruins.

At first glance, it wasn’t that much unlike Veliki. Then I remembered that Veliki had bored creation wizards and the like who paid people for the privilege of designing their homes. This place likely didn’t have that. A second glance revealed countless traces of disrepair, which made sense considering.

Was every place going to be like this? I knew Veliki was extravagant the moment I saw the sprawl of Breach, but there just weren’t any traces of that kind of neglect in the buildings of my hometown. In any case it induced a sense of wonderment, as well as a thought wondering why the people that lived here didn’t do better.

“So this is Source.” I commented, my amazement and disappointment blending into something neutral.

Jevi glanced at me. “First time here? You must’ve used the Heated Channel to get around then. Or the Chilled Channel.” I answered by way of shrugging. “Source used to be the place Kreg’uune mined iron and other useful, if not valuable minerals. No gemstone mines here, but essentials. Plus, I’m pretty sure a conclave of druids is set up in these parts, making the soil fertile, though you won’t see the farms from here. They’re on the west side of that wooden jungle.” She was pointing at the village on the opposite bank.

“It is a critical location for the kingdom.” Weldon added, his eyes not quite looking ahead as if he were more focused on listening to someone. “Travelers and merchants headed to or from Juvel to most of the country will pass by here.”

Jevi looked a bit put out that she was sharing the explanation. I was focused on another fact that had just been aired.

“Passing through here is the quickest way to Juvel?” A note of panic crept into my voice. That meant Avien was likely here. Had we been traveling the same way as him the entire time? By how thin a margin did Jevi and I miss him because of the bandit attack?

Jevi caught on to my spiral of thought. “He would’ve gone north west to find a dock on the Channel intersection. If it’s from Breach, the faster method of travel involves following the Channel out to sea and hugging the coast south. If he came this way, he’d be spending an extra half-week on a convoy.”

So he’s not here. I let out a breath. “Then let’s find somewhere to rest our feet.”

Weldon and Jevi both murmured agreement as they once again fell into step on either side of me. If I was being honest, I was tiring of this entourage. Only my feet were aching from all the walking and I deigned it less effort to just tolerate it for the time being. Of course, first we had to solve the problem of crossing the river. The other side of it was built out, but the same was not true for the side we were on.

\V/

The water splashed quietly as my feet came to rest in the shallow bank. Any footing dropped away dramatically further ahead, leaving a vast stretch of water splayed out in front of me. It moved quickly, but in no hurry. The water was water, and would reach its destination before the end of time.

That was all that mattered to the river. It did not care for me as I stood there, looking across for the other bank and wondering what waited for me on the other side.

But that was wrong. The river did care for me.

The river wanted to wash me away.

It would carry me with it. Be it on a vessel, or by whisking my body away with the current, heedless of my ability to stay above the water. But that was a distinction that mattered not to it or to me. It cared for me. That was why it pulled at the water around my boots, why it wished for me to let it take me where it will.

I wondered at the destination.

“For you,” a voice rang out, piercing my ears as though two men were whispering in both at the same time. Deeper than any voice I had heard before, but lacking any impact beyond the words uttered. No vibrations coursed through my body but I felt the effect of the intent nonetheless. “... the destination is not a place that will be welcoming. You will be rejected.”

The mild patterns of the flowing river in front of me were disturbed as a huge form emerged from underneath the surface. Whatever it was, the presence of the creature darkened the waters around them, turning what was lightly coloured but opaque water under the twilight sky to darkness like the blackest of nights.

And from within that blackest night, two glowing, slitted, golden eyes watched me.

The rising and falling water did nothing to obfuscate those eyes as the head they resided within broke the surface of the river. But as the water ran off of its form, the shape of the creature was revealed.

It was a snake’s head, but twice as wide as I was tall. Scales coloured like silver showed me a thousand reflections. Its long neck ran back into the river, and that dark cloud of presence continued for quite some time. This thing was much larger than the beithir I had faced.

Yet… I felt no fear.

“You may step forward no further.” Its jaw did not move. The eyes closed and the head tilted forward. “This is not my doing.”

“Amber. Amber!” Someone was shaking me.

Ah. It was Jevi.

“Yes. What is it.” I asked, glancing back at where the snake head had been. Just a ship slowly moving upriver in the distance.

Something in the back of my mind wondered at whether that was possible, then dismissed it as obviously possible. It was happening right there. Any druid would be able to control the current like that. And there was a conclave here, apparently.

But enough of that. I looked back to Jevi.

“We hired a gondola to cross the river.” Jevi explained after a little hesitation. “It was either that or walk another three days to the nearest bridge.”

I did remember talk about that. I was going to comment something about extortion, wasn’t I? Well, I wasn’t in the mood anymore. I looked around for the aforementioned gondola and couldn’t find it. It made sense. We were standing next to one of the few buildings built over the river on this side, and there was a sign advertising gondola hire right there. It was just that we couldn’t see the dock attached from where I was standing, even though we were on the shore of the river.

“Okay.” I said, and turned to enter.

A hand on my arm stopped me. I looked back to see a look of concern on Jevi’s face.

“Are you okay?” She asked.

Ah. Concern. It almost moved something inside. I had to think about my answer. “Yes.” I decided. Nothing hurt at the moment, so I was okay.

I’d never been on any boats before, so getting on the gondola was exciting for me. I nearly overturned it with the first step I took on it. The man who would be transporting us across the river gave me some advice, and the next time I attempted a first step involved less flirting with disaster. Jevi sat next to me, then I got to sit and watch it happen again with Weldon, who was wearing armour. That was less satisfying that I expected it to be.

Once we were all on and away I was free to ponder on what I’d seen. A snake head telling me I had to go back and that it wasn’t its fault? What was that supposed to mean? I wasn’t the type to vividly hallucinate, I’d be an oracle or seer if I was, so this had to be different.

Maybe… a memory?

“Oh.” I said out loud.

I’d been alive for a week. Ten days had passed since I’d slipped into the realm of the dead for the night. Torment had warned me about this. I would’ve sworn if I felt myself. I hadn’t packed any chocolate like he’d suggested.

\V/