Kyle threw himself away from the bear-like Treant. It slammed its mossy paw down and tilled the earth. But as it drew away, roots and grass wove through the clumps like thread and settled the forest bed. Improved it, even, as flowers blossomed among the green.

It swiped its paw out, and the blades of grass turned into blades proper to spear his shoulder as he stood up. He moved and they went taut, tethering him as the Treant rounded on him.

Rather than cut the grass, Kyle just wrenched harder. Blood rolled down his arm and sprinkled the green. His wounds healed in a second, and he swung his axe through the cluster of branches that was its arm. Wood cracked, the Treant lurched, and drove him with its shoulder first into the dirt.

A few meters away, Micah sat with his legs crossed and ripped out tufts of grass like a lame goalkeeper.

Ryan hiked up a short hill to where Jason and Lea watched. They sat in a loose circle around the clearing where the two fought, and where the tree shrine stood at one end, and kept an eye out for trouble, picking off any animals that wandered near or birds that speared down.

It was also an opportunity to catch their breath and eat something. Last stretch, they were giving their all. Lea had claimed all of the vitality gummies to keep up; Lisa her monster jerky.

No wonder she was so fond of it. She had probably grown up eating real monsters in the Witch’s Forest. Had it affected her at all, growing up? Did it matter? Lisa was Lisa. She needed to be.

Kyle cussed at the Treant and roared as he pressed it off himself long enough to roll out from under it and fled.

They had tried to let him go off on his own yesterday, as much as they could without breaking the rules, but apparently, that hadn’t been enough. He hadn’t leveled. This was the result.

He hacked into the Treant when it came after him and used his axe to drag himself up onto its back with all of the grace of someone trying to span their bedsheet while still on the mattress.

It reached up and slowly, vines wrapped around his chest before it tried to yank him off.

Kyle didn’t let go.

Ryan watched for a moment longer and turned around. “Hey, can I speak to Jason for a moment?”

Lea frowned at him but got the message. She put her gummies away and dusted her glove off as she stumbled down the hill.

He watched her leave. He was pretty sure he hated her. Well, disliked her. Not for any good reason, either. He couldn’t hate someone for being a bully and a gossip when he’d been no better two years ago. The name ‘Flower Boy’ had been partially his fault, too.

It was just … she got to choose.

He sighed as he sat, arms resting on his knees.

“That was rude,” Jason said.

He didn’t care. He lifted an arm at a lazy angle and flicked his fingers out, mumbling, “[Firebolt].”

With a dull fwup like fireworks shooting out of a box, a ring of red light rippled out from around his hand, crumbling into straight links, and a vibrant flame shot into the empty sky.

Months of unfinished spells, training, fighting, and a few hours of reading a proper spellbook was what pushed him over the edge. It had finished what he’d started.

His [Firebolt] was a little flashy, now, different from what the book described. Just as fast, a little denser, brighter, farther reaching. More expensive. Artsy. It fit the image he had seen months ago, of the now-dead happy mess.

Micah wasn’t the only one who had troubles letting things go, apparently. Or maybe he got that from me, too.

“Yours looks like a [Magician’s] [Firebolt],” Jason said. “Refined. It’s cool.”

“Sucks for stealth,” he grumbled. And he shouldn’t be getting compliments on a Class spell. It wasn’t like he’d earned it.

Ryan had leveled, but it was hard to feel relief or happiness, except for Lisa when he had shared the news and thanked her. It would make leveling his other Classes harder. And more importantly … Micah was a [Scout] now, too. He had gotten [Aimed Shot] this morning, a ranged Skill like he had hoped for over a year ago.

Micah wasn’t just obsessed with him, he had realized. He wanted to be like him, of all people. Of course, that was how a normal guy might react after everything they’d gone through together, everything he had gone through with an older, supportive overachiever by his side.

Even from the beginning. How much of Micah wanting to become a [Fighter] had been his fault? How much of all of this was his fault?

I’m his role model, and his best friend. He’s been looking up to me all this time.

Ryan craned his neck around and asked, “Jason, you’re religious, right?” He hated the sound of desperation in his voice.

“Huh?”

“Religious. You believe in the Shepherd?”

“Uhm … yeah. Why?”

There were so many questions Ryan had planned on asking him, coming here. About his god, and why he filled treasure chests, and where they even came from, the Towers, and monsters, and Skills. What secrets were buried with the people they shunned?

Just looking at Lisa, she was full of secrets. She’d done so much good for them. For Micah. They wouldn’t have come nearly as far without her, all the while making her feel like an outcast.

Instead, what came out was, “Why?”

“‘Why’? Why do I believe in the Shepherd?”

“No.” He frowned. That wasn’t what he wanted to ask, either. As shitty as it sounded, he wasn’t interested in Jason’s side of things. He didn’t even know what he wanted. “No, just …” He lowered his voice. “What’s he like?”

“The Shepherd?”

A nod.

Below, wood shattered. It echoed through the lonely forest. The Treant roared like creaking wood and rolling earth as part of its shoulder sloughed to the ground in waves.

Kyle wiped his mouth. As his hands passed over a fan of cuts on his cheek, they disappeared. He heaved a grin. “Come on!”

“Yeah. What does he teach you? Tell you?”

Jason sat up and gave him a considering look. “Why, are you interested?”

“Wouldn’t be asking if I wasn’t, would I?” he snapped. It came out harsher than he’d intended, so he tacked on a shrug.

“Oh, right. Right.” Jason glanced at the others with a hint of concern and lowered his voice to match him. “Just, life lessons, I guess. Lots of stuff. What do you want to know?”

“Life lessons?”

“Stories. Anecdotes. Stuff he sees in the world, sometimes with paintings, and what he thinks about them—”

“The North?”

“Less so, but—”

“Values?”

A nod. “Those. To be a good person, be considerate. Gather life experience so you can understand different perspectives. He likes to travel but knows it’s not for everyone. There are other ways.

“He, uhm, has a bit of radical advice that every person should go on an adventure as a sort of coming-of-age ritual. Hop on a boat, through a portal, pick a road and see where it goes.”

Ryan had heard about that, once. Crazy. If it were just the Towers, that would be bad enough, but that they would inflict themselves on other nations, abandon their home … And it wasn’t like everyone could just afford to do that.

But that wasn’t what he wanted to ask, either. Platitudes and traditions. Every religion he’d heard about said they wanted people to be ‘good’, but what was ‘good’ got all tangled up.

“What about more opinionated values?” he asked. He saw his confusion and elaborated, “Like, how to treat criminals, how to raise a child, what’s good and what’s bad, or like … marriage.”

That came out as a mumble.

Close enough.

“Oh. Uhm, I don’t know …?”

He rounded on him. “What do you mean, ‘you don’t know’?”

“I mean, there’s lots, but it depends on context. Like, for punishments, I’ve read a few pages where he approves of ones in passing, but those are things anyone would approve of for smaller crimes. Fines, community hours, jail time. For worse things … Once, he approved of exile.”

“Exile? What, so they can become someone else’s problem?”

If their nation exiled every burn-out [Fighter]-turned-criminal, all of the nations of the world would come after them. At a certain level, they were just better than other people.

“No, no. I mean, I don’t know. This was a specific case, long ago, where a murderer was sent into a desert. It wasn’t a death sentence because they were blessed by spirits, but it sentenced them to a life full of hardships.”

A desert. Ryan thought of the globes and could only think of few, but there was a big one in the center of the western continent. Lin. Yesterday had been humbling in that respect, too.

But far more importantly—

“How was a murderer blessed by spirits?”

He shrugged. “Spirits are odd.”

Ryan scowled. He didn’t ‘get’ them either, but he didn’t get anything lately. “What about the other things?”

“Uhm, I’ve never read anything about raising children. I have read some pages about how to be a good son or daughter, or how to deal with a bad home situation. As for marriage, he writes fondly of happy couples he’s met, so I imagine marriage is just one step further?”

“And stuff like institutional marriage, or faith marriage, or marriage roles, or … something more out-there, like polyamory?” He stumbled over the word and picked it back up. “Specifically?”

“I don’t know—”

“Yeah, you keep on saying that.” He began to raise his voice.

“Because I don’t,” he insisted. “I can’t speak for him. I haven’t read everything he’s written and besides, you always have to consider the context. He doesn’t write … manuals for proper living, for proper marriage. I don’t even— He’s not a lawmaker, Ryan.”

“Shouldn’t he be?”

“No? It’s on us to piece together the pieces for guidance, not to force them on others like the Church did.”

“But he’s a god!” he hissed. Someone had to know what was going on.

Jason stared at him and said, “We don’t know that, actually.”

“What?”

“We know that he is … He has influence,” Jason said, “that he is an acquaintance of the Dwarf, whoever she or he may be, that he understands the Towers and can find his way around them with ease, to add to treasure chests. We know he can hear our prayers. Or we think so, because he will answer them through actions, sometimes. But we also know he was a regular man, once. From what we’ve been able to piece together, he has been alive for about half a millennium. Though he isn’t a Vat, so he must have some other way of staying alive.”

“He isn’t a god?” Ryan asked. He smiled for some reason he didn’t understand, but it wasn’t a happy thing.

“Maybe—”

He got up. “What’s the point, then?!”

“What even is a god?” Jason asked. “Nobody knows. Nobody knows how or if they exist, but does he have to be one? We know he’s a powerful being who can affect change in the world, for the better. He can be good and help and— Isn’t that enough?”

Ryan shook his head and turned away, dusting the blades of grass off his hands on his pants.

Jason sounded like all the insane cultists his dad warned him about, almost like he was the Shepherd’s fan instead of a true believer.

If he was so good, where was he? Why didn’t he show himself? Why did he leave gifts in treasure chests to lure people to their death? If he was just a man, how could anyone believe in him?

He scowled as he stumbled down the hill.

“Ryan,” Jason called after him. “I can’t give you the answers. I don’t have them, myself. I’m not a [Priest] because they don’t exist anymore. But—!”

He stopped.

“But maybe I can do some research, scrap some copies I have together for you? To give you a start to look for them yourself?”

He hesitated on that hill. Below, the Treant could barely move, cracked in a dozen places. Kyle was catching his breath before he went to deliver the final blow and still, the monster looked to its side. At Micah.

Ryan had wondered about that. Why would it look to him when he sat there with his legs crossed, the least threatening of their group? Not because it saw an opportunity, it was a protector of this shrine.

It began to turn back to Kyle and Micah ripped out another tuft of grass, clumps of dirt clinging to the bottom, roots and all. The Treant stared daggers.

Kyle doesn’t know, he realized, because the guy grinned as he used the opportunity to strike.

Ryan felt something close to relief at that. He wasn’t a lame goalkeeper after all. But that only led to more questions.

If he was supposed to be his role model instead of whatever else he might have hoped for, once upon a time, should he tell him he’d done a good job? Be proud? He was proud of Micah because he had accomplished so much in such a short span of time despite all the things that had happened to him, but Ryan didn’t know if he had ever told him that out loud.

He didn’t know if he could do this, be that person for him.

His mom and dad always told him they were proud when he did good, on exams, and grades, and when he leveled or got a new Skill. Until he didn’t. Then they said, ‘Next time’.

Slowly, he turned and began to hike back up the hill. He sat near Jason and hung his head in shame.

“I’d like that,” he mumbled. “And I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright.”

It wasn’t, but Ryan wasn’t going to argue the point anymore. His thoughts were all over the place lately.

They watched as Kyle cut into the Treant and ripped its crystal out, a verdant twisted bulb that glistened like fire potion in a puddle. His body sagged but he held it up like a champion’s prize, beaming with pride.

Micah clapped energetically and after a moment, their other two teammates joined in with much less fervor. Kyle might have blushed. It might have been the blood and exertion.

“Don’t you guys have like, a compendium of all the Shepherd’s quotes, or his best ones you can pass around?” Ryan asked, stilting his voice like he was making a joke.

Jason shook his head and there was a bite to his tone when he answered, “You think they’d let us?”

“Oh, right. Sorry.”

He wondered if there were any laws concerning people like himself. He’d never read up on the topic or asked … he didn’t even know if he could get the [Lover] Class, one way or another.

He was afraid of the answer, if there was one.

“Can we please open the treasure chest, now?” Micah called out below.

Kyle nodded, a large movement in his exhaustion, and stumbled out of the remains toward the shrine where a treasure chest stood. It looked like it was made of living ferns and fungi.

“When I was a young man,” Jason said. “I struggled with addiction.”

It took him a moment to process the statement. Then he spun on him. “Huh?!”

His bewilderment must have been a sight to see, because Jason cracked a smile and laughed. “Not me. The Shepherd. It’s a famous quote of his.”

“Your … ‘god’,” he said, “struggled with addiction?” If that was supposed to rid him of his doubts, it did not.

Maybe they were cultists.

“Not with a drug,” he said. “It was something magical, although he experimented with drugs as well. So yes.”

“Oh.” He didn’t really know how to respond to that. Some small part of him regretted coming back. His curiosity tugged at him, and told him to go look in the chest as an excuse to leave.

He didn’t.

“I like that quote,” Jason said, “because it reminds me of a lesser-known one. ‘The road is long but it never ends.’”

Now, Ryan understood. He sagged himself, groaning in exhaustion. “Is it supposed to be a comfort?”

“It can be?”

Maybe. Was it one for him? Ryan didn’t know. It sounded a lot like what his parents might say but … different. It didn’t make any promises. Not for love or an ending, good or bad.

Someday, Ryan wanted to reach a point where he could cling to what he had, rest, and be happy.

He had no idea how to get there.

“It feels like a bandage.”

“That’s an interesting way of saying ‘platitude’.”

Ryan smiled. “It’s not what I meant.”

“Okay.”

He saw Jason glance at the others and stood up, making a decision. “C’mon. Don’t you want to see what we found?”

“I do, but … Not to sound weird, but I don’t want to struggle with an ‘addiction’ of my own someday.”

“Addiction? What do you— Oh. Oh, no. Jason.” Ryan wouldn’t have thought him the type to beat himself over that. “That was on me. I convinced you to leave.”

“I know, but I still did because I wanted to see the excitement and hoard for myself. I left you.”

“You helped them.”

“I know, but you say that and I think this, and neither of us will convince the other. So give me a minute to prove to myself that I could have waited?”

He hesitated. “Alright.”

Ryan stayed with him, looking through the sprawling woods and maze of tree trunks that blocked his vision from reaching too far. He listened and, after a moment, reached up again.

“[Firebolt].”

The bolt even spiraled ever-so-slightly as it climbed the sky. It glistened with hints of other colors but didn’t explode or shine like a flare, especially not in daylight. He wondered what it would look like at night, though. He suspected he could imagine it.

In the distance, twigs cracked and the underbrush rustled as monsters came crawling out of the woodworks after the signal fire. It was a familiar way of distracting himself when he was in doubt.

But after …

He glanced at Jason as they grabbed their weapons. Maybe after, he could continue on that road again. If he reached out to Barry, maybe they could gather enough people to book an airdrop together.