We left the fort on a dirt road that was as bleak as the rest of the borderlands. It was wide enough for us to ride side-by-side, presumably designed with carriages and wagons passing by in mind. It wasn't taking us quite directly to the Everlasting Forest, but it was only a bit windy, and better this than trying to brave the featureless wastes.

As an aside, the fort itself was a bit of a historical relic. The Meditator was a curiosity but not known to be literally the Heir, so despite some early attempts to build around it, the demon raids and such discouraged any long-term building. A fort was eventually built in the general vicinity mostly to defend towns further deep in Kingdom territory from such raids, but the location was poor (far closer to the wastelands than anyone wanted to be), and was readily abandoned during the Long Silence of the Demon King, which to this point has lasted for a good number of years. It wasn't until some militaristic royals in the Pendrack Court decided an abandoned fortress was a blight to the Kingdom's honor that they bothered sending a contigent of mostly new recruits to it, ordered largely just to get the magical defenses up to par and make their presence known in the region.

Why was I monologuing about stuff nobody cares about? To distract myself from Rose. She was facing directly ahead and didn't exactly seem open to small talk, though who knew for sure. She wasn't wearing her helm or ornate plate armor, deciding instead to free up her flowing blonde hair and wear the same body-hugging leather armor from before. I wasn't intimidated by her startlingly good looks or anything, nor afraid of her ice-blue eyes freezing me to death with a dismissive glance, but I did feel at a loss about the gap between us. We were from different worlds, different cultures, and while she didn't know the exact nature of my teleportation here, she knew I knew jack shit about this place. So it was a bit hard to talk. There was a bit of a power imbalance, and I didn't want to accidentally sound stupid or something.

Eventually, though, the stifling silence overwhelmed my hesitation. As pretty as the sprawling dirt fields around us were, I would probably go insane if I did nothing but stare at them all day.

"So," I said. Rose angled her head slightly my way, but didn't turn to make eye contact. "Who are you?"

It was something of a power move. I wasn't trying to play any high-level mindgames here, but I thought it would be fun to ask a question I knew the answer to. The turns had tabled in my favor here, and I wanted to play my cards while they still had any weight at all. Her secret would have to come out eventually, and if not now, then it would probably be when we arrived at the Everlasting Forest.

"The truth is... I'm just a girl."

"Har har. This trip's going to take a good number of days, we might as well get to know each other a little better. How about it?"

The ball was in her court. She could either answer with her paladin cover story, tell the truth, or keep playing coy. I was honestly fine with all three. This was, after all, just a little banter to get to know her better.

Rose peered up at the sky. "About noon. What do you say about settling down for some sparring and lunch? We can talk then."

"Lunch, yes. Sparring, what?"

She cocked an eyebrow. "You may be the Heir, but as we discussed, you are not yet an invincible god-king of infinite power. You would do well to train, and as I am something of a blademaster myself, I will kindly offer my services as an instructor for free." She was already getting off her horse. I climbed off mine, too. She knew I learned fast, due in part to the inarguable fact I had learned the novice spells to four different schools of magic overnight, and in part to me telling her I had no fighting skills when I woke up despite how okay-ish I had held up during the troll fight.

"Fair enough. So what, you'll have me do 100 air-swings until I've mastered the art of the swing or something?"

"Something like that," Rose replied, putting her hair up in a ponytail before rummaging through the saddles on the side of her horse before pulling out two wooden swords. She tossed one my way. "Think fast."

I barely had time to catch it before she was on top of me. I dodged her first swipes, parried to the left, countered to right, but got caught in the neck. If she had been going all-out, my neck probably would have been broken, but instead I just got knocked to the side, breathless.

Skill Up! Dodging Level 13!

Skill Up! One-Handed Blades Level 21!

"Ow," I groaned, mostly for show. Despite getting hit in the end, I had still dodged and parried enough to get a level in each. "Are air-swings not good enough for you?"

"I am of the opinion that people grow the fastest in high-stress environments. The path of least resistance must be to grow, not to weather the storm, and so the storm must be too deadly to simply weather." She flashed a smile. "This will also give you a chance to practice Restoration, no?"

"Fair point." I healed the bruise on my neck and got a level; it was only at 3 before that, anyway, so it didn't take much. "So we talk while we do this?"

"Indeed."

And so we did. At first I was so focused on defending I didn't get a word in edgewise, but eventually I learned the moments when she would step back and pause to let me get my back on my feet. It was a bit frustrating that she had to go so easy on me, but I was a humble man, and I knew I was outmatched the second I saw her backflipping on the battlefield. Backflips were like the ultimate move, if you saw someone doing one of those in a battle you just knew they were a master. Besides, I was leveling up fast enough we would probably be equals... eventually...?

"So," I said, parrying a slash to the left. "Who are you?"

"I am but a humble village girl," she replied, converting her feint to a thrust, "who happened to be picked up by the church and trained rigorously in sword combat and politicking."

"Seems like an awful lot of resources to dump into a single paladin." I tried to dodge the thrust by tilting my head slightly in epic fashion, but got a scrape across the cheek for my efforts.

"The church treats its recruits quite well." She batted aside my revenge-thrust with the back of her armored hand. (That couldn't have been the most effective thing to do. She was subtly pointing out the stab was too slow, and predictable.)

"Where do they get their recruits? Orphans? Willing applicants? Runaway royalty?" This time I actually put my all into dodging her swing, and got a levelup for my efforts.

"Oh, all walks of life. The Holy Church questions not the circumstances of one's birth, but how one serves the Goddess with the gift of life they have been given." She rewarded my epic dodge with a fast follow-up which I neatly parried. Another level up. Interesting that Parry wasn't a skill or anything; it was all combined within One-Handed Blades.

My next move, both in the sparring and the conversation, was a difficult choice. She was playing coy, probably just for fun, and she had the advantage since I knew jack shit about the Holy Church or what have you. Ultimately, I decided to be direct. Like I said: I wasn't exactly trying to engage in a high-level mind game.

"So, what are we going to do about the human part of the five royals? You didn't mention that in your plan," I said, blatantly changing the subject while attempting a half-hearted feint to the right.

"Indeed I did not. Curious. Where do you think we might find such a royal?" she asked, not falling for the feint and going for a thrust. If I didn't know better, her constant thrusting would have come across as symbolic for something, but I could guess that she just wanted me to learn to dodge thrusts, since they were the fastest and arguably most deadly of all sword maneuvers.

I dodged the thrust the same way as before. Repetition made perfect. "I can hardly call myself an expert, but given the brutal battle for succession that apparently rages throughout the Court at all times, maybe I would start by looking for sequestered daughters hidden among neutral factions. Any stunningly attractive and attractively deadly woman would surely raise my suspicions," I said. The flattery was a bit on the nose, but—

Love Point Gained! Rosalyn +1

What.

I eyed Rose carefully. There was no change in her expression, and she continued the sparring as normal. Whatever had happened under the surface, she wasn't letting it show... If anything had happened at all. Maybe it was just an arbitrary marker that didn't mean anything. There was no way to tell.

"That certainly would be suspicious," she replied, perhaps a half-second slower than usual. "We know what to keep an eye out for, then." She upped the ante a bit, launching a flurry of still-manageable swings which I parried one after another. I was both getting better and getting more used to her style, or at least, the style she used while holding back.

Skill Up! One-Handed Blades Level 25! Advanced Tier Reached!

Bonus: +10 Base STR + DEX!

Tier Bonus: You now suffer no penalty for wielding two one-handed blades at once.

"Hold up," I said, lifting a hand. She stopped instead of whacking me over the head, which was nice.

I had just gotten a lot of new information in a short period of time, which I needed to process. First and foremost, my base attribute bonus increased with each tier. There were five tiers: Novice, Advanced, Proficient, Expert, and Master. From what I gathered, the people here didn't think of them as skill tiers, but just general levels of competence. It was still a mystery whether this system was unique to me, but it seemed the skill tiers were matching the hierarchy used in general, so that was a big clue. The increased bonuses over the tiers indicated yet another way in which the level up system was broken, it had somehow gotten even more exponential than before.

Second and not so important because numbers were everything to me, each tier had a little bonus. A perk, if you will. This one seemed pretty nice; I liked dual-bladed swords like Darth Maul's lightsaber more than dual-wielding swords, but it seemed like a somewhat linear increase in power, and I wasn't about to complain about that.

Grinding levels was obviously important, both for attributes and for these tier bonuses, but I only got skill ups when challenging myself, and that wasn't very conducive for training while riding a horse. Casting fireballs into the air unfortunately did not count as challenging myself, though maybe there was room for experimenting with, like... Making complicated shapes out of the fire. I would have to experiment later, but I got the feeling most if not all of my "grinding" would be done at camp rather than during travel. Oh well.

My monologuing was interrupted by Rose taking the sword out of my hand. "That will do for today, I suppose. We need to eat lunch eventually."

I looked at her. Her lightly tanned skin was covered in a gleen of sweat; not soaked, but enough to show this had been a reasonable enough workout. Her clothes beneath her armor stuck to her a bit, and I couldn't help but watch when she turned and went back to her horse to put the swords away. The only thing stopping me from losing myself in the eye candy was the thought she might find it creepy if she turned her head while bending over and saw me staring.

Thus, I averted my eyes, looking back to the way we came to search the horizon for any distraction. I saw... Wait. Was that... a blob? A black... purple-y blob, at the edge of the horizon? I squinted, but it vanished out of sight, as if avoiding my gaze. I...

"See anything?" Rose asked, digging out some dried meat and berries from our saddlebags. She had undone the ponytail; her waterfall of hair was flowing once again.

"I'm going to say no because I want it to not be true."

"Then let us drown ourselves in a feast."

After finishing our meal it was back on the road, and back to mostly silence. I experimented with grinding up Elemental spells by manipulating the form of the elements but got nothing; Elemental was, to my knowledge, a purely offensive Arcana, with the only "defense" they provided being in the form of, say, creating a giant rock to smash someone except because it's a rock it also blocks things well. It stood to reason one would not get better at it without having some foes to take down. Mysticism seemed more promising in general with its Telekinesis and such, but my mind drifted to Cursed Magic. I was so close to Advaned tier there.

"Hey, Rose. Can I eat some of your hair?" I asked, absent-mindedly.

Rose gave me a silent look. There was no emotion in her ice-cold eyes. A second passed, and then she pulled a few long, luscious strands of blonde hair out of her head. "Why not?"

"It's for Cursed magic," I explained as I gingerly folded them before popping them into my mouth. "My esteemed teacher taught me a spell that requires you to eat someone's hair. Their soul, technically, but you know." I gestured.

"I can imagine."

"Cool. You may want to watch this so you know what you're getting into. Tamashinozoki."

A shimmering image of Rose formed in the air. It was exceedingly faint, and the image was fairly blurry. A few strands of hair wasn't enough for a very powerful version of the spell, it seemed.

"Testing, testing, one two three," I said aloud. No sound came from the image.

"Testing testing," Rose said helpfully. I heard her voice through the image, though it was distorted and quiet. Definitely needed more Soul Juice for a clear imagine.

I cancelled the spell and let it fade away.

Skill Up! Cursed Magic Level 21!

It seemed trying out the new spell had earned me a level. I could get my non-combat spells up outside of combat, and since Cursed had combat applications as well, that would be a match made in heaven. Perhaps I was fated to be a Cursed mage all along, to spend my life in the dark with—... With... Nevermind. Let us never think of this again.

I tried summoning and re-summoning it for a bit, but got no extra levels. The system seemed finnicky and arbitrary, but maybe that was just due to my ignorance, and really, I could hardly be mad that it wasn't letting me instantly grind to max level.

We continued riding. In the afternoon we broke free of the borderlands and reached a more grassy, pleasant plain. It was hardly a feast for the eyes, so to speak, but the rolling green landscape and white clouds dotting the blue skys made for a fairly picturesque scene. It was late, though, and the falling sun turned the lovely blue to black.

We called it a day there. We both had our own tents and the like, so after a quick dinner of largely the same thing we had for lunch, we pitched our tents a short distance from the road (such that our position was partially obscured by a slight hill) and rolled out our respective bedspreads. After exchanging curt nods, we slipped into our tents and that was that.

It was hot enough I didn't get under the blanket I had brought. I took off my shirt (leaving my reasonably soft linen pants on), rested on top of the blanket, and stared at the ceiling, waiting. An hour passed, then two, and only once I was reasonably confident Rose was asleep did I risk my next move.

"Save game," I whispered.

Error! Function locked.

"Quicksave."

Error! Function locked.

OK. Saving was out of my hands. I was tempted to try "load game," but if it defaulted to loading the quickload and put me back at the start I would probably just let the orc bash my skull in out of pure misery. Hopefully there were invisible autosaves or something.

With that experiment done, I rested my head back and tried to sleep. Thoughts of the day ran through my mind. Honestly, it had been really nice. A day of quiet, with some nice sparring, and a bit of nice chatting with Rose. I liked her, honestly. She was fun to talk to, even if she was something of an ice queen, and I had to respect her sword skills. I got where I was through essentially cheating, but she had no doubt trained hard for years, sweating blood and tears while hiding her identi—

What was that rustling noise?

I opened my eyes and sat up. The entrance to my tent flapped a little, then settled down. That was concerning. I scanned the room, but didn't see anyone or anything. Huh. Must've been the wind.

It happened at soon as I laid back down and closed my eyes.

A heavy mass plopped down on my hips. I shot my eyes open and saw the silhouette of a curvy woman in robes before suddenly my vision was obstructed by a pale moon dotted with two purple portals to the abyss.

Hilda?!

I didn't even have time to react before she was pressing her lips against mine in a slobbering, completely inexperienced kiss. Her teeth knocked against mine and our noses mashed together, her clear priority being nothing more than to push our faces against each other as hard as possible. I felt her weight against mine, with her big soft boobs getting squashed against me as she grinded her torso against mine, the only thing separating my bare chest from them being her robes. I forgot just how heavy people could be; she was by no means fat, but she had her whole meaty body on top of me and was forcibly pressing down.

It took five solid seconds of face-smashing before I managed to find her surprisingly slender shoulders with my hands and forcibly push her off me. She fell back a bit, but then uprighted herself, still sitting on my hips. Despite the cloak of darkness, I could vaguely see her licking her lips, which made me realize how my own mouth was covered with saliva. She began to speak as I pulled the blanket up to wipe it off. (I was kind of at a loss for what else to do.)

"M-My love," she began, clearly having rehearsed this in her head many times. "F-Fate brought us together, th-then pulled us apart. I-I know, th-the Heir cannot be with a lowly Cursed mage, I-I know, you have to hide the nature of our bond from everyone else. I-I understand. H-History is filled with s, s, s-soulmates torn apart. B-But, i-it's okay. Y-You can keep up appearances, and y-you can try to move on, b-but I will always be here, i-in your shadow. I am yours, now and forever. Forever." The last statement was firm, without any stammering.

"Uh," I began.

It dawned on me that I had fucked up. What was I thinking? If a hot babe appeared out of nowhere and saved a lonely nerd in his time of need, in what world would he not immediately fall in love? The cheesier her lines about true love and fate were, the more the nerd would want to believe, and the harder he would believe. The gender chessboard had all the answers, but I ignored them. I was blind to my own lessons, and now I was paying the price. My platonic friendship with Hilda had ended before it began. I had gone in too hard at the start, and now I was in too deep. You can't unflip the crazy switch without one or both of you dying in a suspicious knife accident.

The silence stretched on as I debated what to say. If it was hot before, it was pretty stifling now, with both of us in here. I couldn't see the sweat seeping into her black robes, but I could feel some of it pooling on my lower chest in a trickle, beneath her crotch. It felt oddly warm for sweat, but now wasn't the time to think about that. I had to say something.

"That may be unhealthy."

"I don't care."

"There's a lot of fish in the sea."

"Only you."

"This won't be easy on you."

"It's worth it."

Damn, she was good. This was like the final boss in a certain famous CRPG, where it was impossible to convince them to step down based on moral or emotional grounds. You had to logically explain why they were wrong in concrete terms, and I didn't think I had a high enough speech skill (metaphorically) to manage that in a way that didn't result in her stabbing me in the throat then herself. I had only myself to blame for this.

"See you tomorrow?" I ventured.

"Always," she whispered, and then vanished. I still felt her on me, but she got up and left, the flap of the tent flapping behind her. Note to self: Cursed magic had an invisibility spell, probably related to darkness. I bet it was some nonsense like "it destroys the light that touches you and reproduces it on the other side," but I had no idea. Did that mean Mysticism didn't have an invisibilty spell? The rational thing for me to have done was to get a list of all known spells, but I knew I wouldn't have it in me to memorize like 100 spells right off the bat. That could come with time.

Don't take monologuing as a kneejerk reaction to avoid thinking about reality or traumatic events of the recent past. Sometimes you just get curious about what spell a powerful witch used to attack you in your sleep. Sometimes you wonder if it's possible to be safe against a creature of the night when you have to sleep eventually, and they are apparently patient enough to wait hours for that to happen. There's a lot of things to think about in this complicated life we live in.

Ultimately, it took a few hours before I calmed down enough to sleep. The pool of sticky sweat on my stomach made things uncomfortable, even after trying and failing to wipe it all off.

I woke up and opened my eyes to an orc swinging its axe down. Haha, just kidding.

I sat up and put my shirt and armor back on, then stepped out of my tent. Rose was already awake, sitting cross-legged in what looked like a form of meditation.

"I think we made a mistake last night," I said.

Rose opened an eye. "Oh?"

"We both went to bed at the same time. One of us should have stayed up to keep watch. We can take turns. Also, we should like, physically block the entrance to the other's tent with our bodies while standing watch."

"But I did keep watch. I just didn't mention it."

"What...? Did you not see, uh... I mean..." I gestured in the air, trying to think of how to word this.

"Did I not see Hilda, the esteemed Cursed mage who will now be accompanying us in our journey?"

"Uh."

"I stayed up in particular to greet her. It would be rude not to after she so kindly waited until we were a far enough from the fort to not connect us with her military desertion, of which I know nothing of."

"She might have had other motivations than that for waiting until nighttime. Did you... Did you let her in my tent?"

"She wanted to say hello."

"I..."

Was Rose fucking with me? She had to be. But did that mean she... okay with it? I couldn't imagine so. I mean, not to imply we were a thing, singular love point aside. I was talking about her being okay with, like... letting a visibly deranged soul-eating mage be alone with the Heir of the World or whatever? Eeeh. I just didn't know Rose enough to make a judgment call here one way or another. How did she feel? What was she thinking? What was she planning? There were a ton of factors here, and outside of looking like an idiot for directly asking when she was clearly playing coy, I didn't know enough to make any solid guesses. For now, I would assume she was okay with the Heir of the World being stalked by a thirsty Cursed mage for inscrutable reasons such as a prophecy regarding the Heir ultimately being stabbed in his sleep over a domestic dispute.

"That she did. So, uh, where is—" I began, only for a hand to rest on my shoulder.

"R-Right here," came a voice right in my ear.

"GOD FUCK WHAT," I yelped, spinning around and instantly assuming a combat posture. There Hilda was, in all her ill-fitting black robe glory, messy black hair halfway covering her ghostly pale face. I hadn't heard anything.

There was a pause. Thinking about it, she hadn't, like, leapt on me from behind, or started ranting about love, so she was clearly restraining herself. What had she said last night? Something about being in my shadow, putting up appearances, etc? I guess in-the-middle-of-a-field-with-Rose counted as a public setting. That was admirable restraint, really, not to sound cocky. I dropped my stance.

"Morning," I said, getting a 'M-Morning" in reply. Nobody commented on my yelp or temporary assumption of a combat posture. I leaned to the left and saw a third tent positioned in the shadow of mine... Hah hah, clever. Apparently she had come prepared. There was a third horse here, too.

We all sat in a circle and prepared our breakfasts, simple dishes of bread and dried fruit. It was a week or so long ride to the Everlasting Forest to my understanding, and we had enough basics for that. Apparently we could get a bit of hunting done once we crossed streams with fish, roaming animals, etc, but for now bread and fruit would do. Nature magic could apparently produce rapidly-growing crops to eat, but we didn't have a nature mage with us, and I wouldn't be learning any until we got to the elves. They were masters, naturally, and even if they didn't really teach outsiders, all I had to do was trick them into giving demonstrations. Or asking. I kind of assumed by default I would have to trick people to earn their help.

I didn't feel any tension between Rose and Hilda during the meal. Rose's face was as cool and impassive as ever, while Hilda was staring at the ground and only occasionally mumbling to herself about something. Whether they would develop a platonic friendship the likes of which I could only stare at with envy was anyone's guess, but for now they seemed to be just fine in the other's presence. By my measure, anyway. Maybe Hilda was mumbling out plans to stab Rose in her sleep. I kept using the example of her stabbing people in their sleep because, really, that was just the vibe she gave. Like, if there was a breaking news story about her stabbing her boyfriend in his sleep, people's main reaction would be surprise that she hadn't already done so before. She had that chaotic energy. That aura of despair and defeatism. Then again, maybe a Cursed mage would like, eat my soul while I slept. God. I needed to stealthily ask Hilda what all her spells were so I could start planning around it.

We finished breakfast uneventfully, packed away our tents, and rode away.

The day passed much like yesterday; mostly quiet, with a smattering of conversation here and there. Hilda (for some god-forsaken reason) wouldn't tell me the rest of her spells, but she did explain the "invisibility" spell. It was Proficient tier (so I needed to be level 50 in Cursed before I could learn it) and simply involved destroying light that touched the user. It actually left a pretty noticeable silhouette when used in daylight (since it blocked light from reaching the eyes), but when used in darkness it made the user blend in incredibly well since there was no color or anything to latch onto; it was just a void, like the emptiness you saw if you stared at the wall in a pitch-black room. When she vanished I just failed to process the void, since it blended in with the darkness of the nighttime tent. It was an interesting spell in that it was better at cloaking you the darker it was, but the effect was the same regardless.

At noon there was more sparring, though this time Hilda was sitting (hugging her knees) and watching. Or, really, staring. Intently. Was I this obvious with Rose? Admittedly, it didn't feel bad to be stared at, but it was pretty distracting. My one blessing was that I needed to keep my armor on to stop me from getting whacked in the side (which boosted my Light Armor skill, incidentally. Kind of a shame that Heavy Armor was still at 2, but what can you do).

The day was uneventful until nighttime, where we planned out the order of our watch. I volunteered for first, then Rose second, then Hilda last. My plan was to use my watch to shore up my defenses, stay on guard for Rose's, then sleep during Hilda's. It may have seemed confusing to sleep during Hilda's watch, but my measure she wouldn't abandon watch to raid my tent (for safety and trust reasons), which left Rose's watch as the only danger moment.

Just to be clear, though, I wasn't actually "afraid" of Hilda per-se (outside of the inherent danger of being stabbed to death in my sleep). I just didn't want to embrace her fervor and let things escalate, for a lot of reasons. First and foremost, I didn't love her. My edgy, deadened heart shut love out first before anything. That really does sound edgy, but when you're surrounded by people "in love" who hate each other and have screaming matches every day, you start to question love, and maybe eventually reject it. Humans learn from example, and if you reject all the examples around you, maybe you're just left with nothing. That's how it felt to me, anyway. Having nothing. Feeling nothing. Not even believing other people really felt anything, if that was how they acted, which left me in an awkward position here. I both felt nothing meaningful for Hilda and, deep down, even struggled to comprehend the idea of her feeling "love" for me, when all the love I had ever seen was so terrible. You can imagine why I wouldn't be eager to jump into her pants.

Sounds a bit cringe? Yeah, emotional weakness is pretty cringe, not gonna lie. We could all choose to be better if wanted, but here I am, choosing not to be better. The famous poet Charles Barkley once said that irony is the song of a prisoner who has come to love their cage, and in tune with that, we can all agree that there's nothing more cringe than a prisoner staring at an open cell door and refusing to leave. It boggles the mind. Just leave! Or, alternatively: Just fuck her! I hear you loud and clear. But I'm feeling cringe today, and given how rooted in this mindset I am, it'll take more than a lusty goth GF to convince me to step out the open door.

And well, I can also say I felt bad about manipulating Hilda into this state. That's more understandable, right? I underestimated her feelings, how she would react, the weight of my own words (which I had considered too cheesy to ever take seriously at the time), etc. And now I felt bad. I don't want to exploit her. Okay, that sounds better. That's noble, not cringe. And also the partial truth. Aren't we humans glorious in our own forced complexity?

Point being, I didn't want to go all the way with her. Not yet. Maybe later. I had the sneaking suspicion that an attractive (if a bit messy and sweaty) woman throwing herself at someone could only be resisted for so long, no matter how cringe and edgy that person may be.

Anyway, watch was uneventful for me. Staring up at the mysteriously purple moon, watcing the grass rustle in the darkness, letting the cool breeze flow over me... It was nice. Heir of the World or no, at the moment I had next to no immediate responsibilities, and could just enjoy the moment as it was. I could even fuck off and abandon the prophecy if I really wanted to, as a last resort, though I didn't want to do that and let Rose down.

When it came time for Rose's watch I woke her up, then moved to my tent, and more or less instantly fell sound asleep the second I laid down.