Blessing Name: Tinderwings. Rank: B+

God, that was so cool. I’d been jealous of Brygid ever since her Blessing. She’d really lucked out.

Hmm, kind of the pot calling the kettle black, isn't it?

Anyway, it suited her. Hot headed, full of (figurative) fire, and a spirit that just wanted to live her own freedom. What better way for that than flight?

A cold smile crossed Brygid and I’s faces as Jackson stumbled a full step backward in shock. To his credit, he recovered quickly, putting on a stoic face as he planted his feet, bracing himself behind his shield. His body language was notably more tense and serious now.

Shockingly, he actually nodded in respect at Brygid. “I see your confidence was not completely unfounded then. But don’t think I’ll go down easily just because of that!”

Brygid’s lips ticked up in a grin. “After all that talk, I would certainly hope not. Then let me show you what my Tinderwings can do!” She twirled the throwing knife in her left hand a couple of times, then clutched the handle extra hard. A single feather from the tip of her left wing detached, then floated down, gently drifting down Brygid’s arm and up onto the blade of the knife. The feather seemed to coat the blade, sheathing it in fire. After several seconds, the missing feather in her wing grew back.

Oh, that was new!

“Here I come Jack!”

Brygid reared back in the air, then dove forward. Her wing beats roared like a blazing furnace as she plummeted directly towards Jackson.

He hunkered down behind his shield. It began drawing in motes of light into itself, filling up with solid white light.

Brygid closed the gap to fifteen feet.

Jack acted, thrusting his shield forward with a shout. Light burst forth from the shield like an explosion. There was no sound, no heat or actual damage, just the violent brightness of a lightning strike projected forward in a large cone.

That partial Examine I shared with Brygid saved her from getting burnt eyes. Just knowing that Jackson had a blind ability made it 100% easier to recognize and deal with it.

As soon as Jackson moved his shield, Brygid hid her face behind her arms. She tucked her right wing in slightly, barely swerving past him, their bodies within inches of each other. Unfortunately for Jackson, Brygid’s wings took up a lot more space than that. He screamed as the fire of Brygid’s left wing washed over him, scorching his unprotected face and inflicting him with the Burn status. His entire body gained a sort of red outline, and small tongues of fire began to lick at him all over.

She glid another twenty feet past him then banked left, making a wide circle to face him again-now from behind. She kept her wings up, but stopped flying, touching down on the ground. According to Brygid, keeping the wings up cost just a little bit of MP, but actually flying took quite a bit more.

Instead of dropping and rolling—the number one choice for not being on fire!—Jack thumped on his breastplate with his shield hand, letting out a ferocious shout, which contained enough force to throw up the dust directly around him. A white glow spread out from his chest to cover his entire body. Like a bucket of water had been dumped on him, the flames instantly fizzled out in puffs of steam. The white glow faded, taking the red outline of the Burn status with it.

Did he just forcibly heal his burn? Shit, that’s super useful.

Jackson turned to face Brygid, soft dirt crunching under his feet. He was missing a little bit of eyebrow, and his cheeks were definitely a bit rosy, but other than that he looked in pretty good shape. He readied his sword and shield, then began to slowly march towards Brygid, taking measured steps. For every step he took forward, Brygid took one back, very carefully keeping the twenty feet between them.

Brygid lifted her right hand, pointing her finger straight at Jackson. The tips of her wings flicked forward, each launching a single feather straight at Jackson. The fiery plumage flew quill first, fast as an arrow.

Jackson jumped left, rolling out of the way of the feathers. Brygid’s wings flicked again, launching another pair of feathers. Jack stood smoothly out of his dodge roll just in time for the two feathers to strike him in the dead center of his chest, blooming into small fireballs on impact. He grunted in pain, his white armor unable to block all of the damage.

Brygid grinned, continuing to pepper Jackson with feathers. “Come on Jack! You gotta step it up if you wanna win this Duel!”

Jackson bared his teeth at Brygid, indignation boiling in his piercing blue eyes. “This is not a Duel at all! You just keep running away! Come and fight me properly, you cowardly piss-ant!”

Brygid twirled the flaming throwing knife in her left hand, and grinned at Jack. “Meh, I think you’re only saying that cause you’re losing. This kind of fight suits me just fine. If you want to fight melee, that’s your problem. You know, I’m really glad you wanted to bump up the EXP. This Duel will get me to level eight easy.”

She beamed the flaming knife at Jackson, who batted it out of the air with his gauntleted fist.

He snarled. “Fine! I’ll do it your way then, bitch!” Raising his sword high above his head, he began to chant. “Ye noble blade of righteous light…” Like his shield before, the sword started collecting sparkling motes of light, glowing dust that began filling the steel blade, though considerably more slowly than the shield had filled.

Brygid began flinging attacks at Jack in an attempt to disrupt his chanting, a pair of feathers and a fire covered knife flying out every second . Jackson simply raised his shield in front of himself, deflecting them where he could, and tanking them where he couldn’t. Every time one of the flaming projectiles exploded into small fireballs against his armor, Jackson flinched in pain, but his focus did not waver. The light filled his sword completely as he cried out, “Brilliant Blade!”

Brygid started moving before Jackson had even finished the words. She sprinted away, then threw herself at the ground, her wings beating furiously. They caught her just before she hit the ground, her body flying above just a few inches above the loose dirt. She skimmed the earth at a blistering pace, her wings kicking up plumes of dust as she started strafing around Jackson.

For his part, he was dead locked on Brygid, swiveling around in place to keep his eyes on her. Then, he struck, whipping his sword out in a vicious horizontal cut.

As he swung, the blade sliced the very air itself, leaving behind a sharp arc of bright white light. Once the slash was finished, the arc of light shot forward in a blur.

It was fast. Faster than I could have possibly predicted, at least twice the speed of Brygid’s feathers, tearing through the space between them in an instant.

Credit where it was due, Jackson’s aim was perfect. He led on her exactly enough for her to run right into the beam’s path. The light arc sailed right over her, carving the top halves of her wings off. Brygid let out a terrible scream, one that curdled my blood, but was quickly silenced as she lost the ability of flight, and gravity came crashing down onto her. She slammed into the dirt, her momentum dragging her on her face for another twenty feet.

Holy shit. “Brygid!” She let out a low groan, then shakily started to push herself off the ground. Still alive, but in rough shape. Her wings were just as much a body part as the rest of her, and getting them cut off hurt the same as her losing any other limb. Panicked, I cast Examine on her to see how much HP she had left.

—————————————

Brygid Jewel

-HP: 450/750

-MP: 878/1130

—————————————

Holy hell. The one attack took that much health? Thank Sam it didn’t connect with her actual body. If Brygid’s wings were damaged, she got hurt (though I’d never seen her take that much damage from it before), but she did have the ability to heal it herself overtime. If that attack had cut off her fucking leg or something, she couldn’t just fix that.

While Brygid pushed herself to her feet, Jackson marched toward her at a deliberate pace. His sword faced the earth, continuing to radiate blinding light. When he reached Brygid, he relaxed his shield, letting it hang limply at his side. He stared down at her, piercing blue eyes hard, unforgiving.

“My apologies. I had merely intended to limit your movement. I was not aware that it would inflict such a grievous injury on you. ” His voice was cool, not apologetic in the least.

He’d known what he’d done.

My hands gripped the wooden fence hard enough to crack it.

Brygid stood fully, wincing as she did. She didn’t look so hot. Her chest heaved, her breathing coming raggedly. Her face was more than a little roughed up, blood oozing out of wounds she got from eating twenty feet of hard earth. The stumps that remained of her wings flickered weakly. Soft flames pooled at the tips of them, slowly growing into replacement feathers, but it would take at least half an hour for Brygid to get back to full fighting capacity.

Her eyes still blazed with fighting spirit. “Right, I’m sure you had no idea that would hurt.”

The young noble just shrugged and lifted his shield back into place. “Whether you believe me or not makes no difference to me.” His lips ticked upward ever so slightly. “Now, do you wish to continue the fight, or will you do the wise thing and surrender? If you wish to continue, we shall, but I believe this Duel won’t last much longer anyway.”

Honestly, I think it’d be better if she just surrendered and took the loss. She couldn’t recover her wings, and she absolutely couldn’t fight him without them.

I knew she wouldn’t though.

That wasn’t Brygid’s style at all. She would definitely fight until the ‘or unconscious’ part. I mean, not that I was any different, but it was always more worrying to watch a friend put themself in danger than to actually do it yourself. Either way, I started walking towards the gate, ready to jump in the second I had to.

Brygid ground her teeth together, her clipped wings flaring with anger. She spit at Jackson’s feet.

His lips curled in disgust.

“I will never surrender. I’d rather die.”

Oh come on Brygid, don’t tempt him.

Jackson bent his knees and crouched slightly, bracing behind his shield. “I won’t kill you, that’d be against the terms of the Duel.” Then he let out a sharp yell, his body glowing with a yellow aura for a brief second.

Suddenly, his body charged forward, though he himself didn’t actually move. It was like something was pushing him from behind, his planted feet plowing through the dirt. Brygid’s eyes were wide as she tried to leap out of the way, but she was too slow.

There was a sickening *CRUNCH* as Jackson’s shield slammed directly into Brygid’s sternum, sending her flying back a dozen feet. She landed on her back, hard.

She didn’t get up.

“Brygid!” I called to her in a panic, making a break through gate leading into the fighting ring. She had to have a broken sternum from that, no question. I heard that crunch from like thirty feet away.

I ran up on the two fighters, quickly Examining Brygid, biting my lip in nervous anticipation, then letting out a relieved sigh.

Thankfully, it hadn’t been a Crushing Blow.

Wait, was that a place that could get Crushing Blow’d?

Ugh, I’d have to ask Syscile about that later. For now, I needed to focus on getting Brygid fixed up. I’d give her my last potion and then search her bag to see if I could find anymore.

Jackson turned to face me as I approached, raising his sword and shield aggressively. “Halt! I will not tolerate interference in this Duel! You cretins started this, but I will finish it. This is what you get for not respecting your betters.”

I froze, biting back my instinctive snark, and instead raising my hands in surrender. “Hold on now, I’m just here to pull her out and leave.” I pointed at Brygid with my finger.

As much as I hated getting my nose rubbed in it like this, Jackson was right. I mean, not about the ‘respect’, but right in that we’d taken him lightly. He just seemed like your average ‘daddy’s little rich boy’, all fancy, but no substance.

Brygid and I had severely underestimated him, thinking that a cursory glance at his abilities would be enough to handle him.

I used Examine on him again, for real this time.

Jackson was level nine, a full two levels ahead of Brygid. His stats were high, particularly his defense and strength, with slightly above average intelligence and wisdom stats. His Blessing, Noble Gleam, was an A rank Weapon Type Blessing that allowed Jackson to blind, shoot those sword beams, activate a ‘commanding aura’ (whatever that meant), hasten status recovery, and more. His skills and abilities seemed tailor made for one on one combat.

I wanted to kick myself after I finished reading. Two levels wasn’t an insurmountable difference at all, not like the Tier gap was, but Jackson also being a higher rank than her multiplied the challenge several fold. Not only that, his entire fighting style was built around on one on one duels. Brygid had been at an all around disadvantage the whole time.

Damn it! That’s shit we should have known. Shit I should have known. I was the one with the magical fucking encyclopedia that spoke directly into my brain, wasn't I? If I had just read his entire sheet from go, this might not have happened.

It was the exact same mistake I made with Tobis. The exact same! Rushing in without all of the information into a situation that I’m not prepared for. Apparently, literally dying because of that wasn’t enough for me to learn from it. Now I went and got Brygid into some serious shit too. If that was a real, outside the city fight, this could have very well been her death bed.

I would never make that mistake again.

Jackson quirked his eyebrows at me, the corner of his lip ticking up in amusement. “Leave? Just like that? No apologies or anything? You two were the ones who started it after all.”

I gritted my teeth and bowed my head. I hated that he was right, so much. “She’s lost the fight, and we’re sorry. Please let us go.”

Jackson’s lips split apart like a hyena’s nasty grin. “Excellent. Now-”

There was a wheezing, pain wracked cough from over where Brygid was laying, and she began to groan. “Uuuugh…”

I rushed forward, swerving around Jackson, and running over to Brygid’s side. “Oh sweet Samuel…”

She was crumpled on the ground in a heap. Her chest had a large, shield shaped dent right in the middle where Jackson’s shield struck. Her breathing was incredibly shallow, chest moving only a faction of an inch.

Without hesitation, I ripped the one remaining potion I had out of my back. I’m gonna be going through so many fucking potions, I just knew it. Would really have to stock up.

Sitting on the ground and putting Brygid’s head into my lap, I popped the cork on the bottle and made her drink it.

Brygid Jewel: HP:250 -> 300/750

The dent in Brygid’s chest gave a loud *pop* and slightly un-caved. Brygid let out a moan of relief as some of her pain was lifted from her. 50HP wasn’t much at all though, and Brygid still had a long way to go before she was all healed.

I gently shook her, smacking the sides of her face a little bit.

“Hey, Brygid! Look at me, are you okay?”

She stirred in my lap, opening her eyes with a groan. They took a second to focus on my face. “E-Emmanuel? What happened?”

“Jackson got you good, Little B. You didn’t pass out, but I’m pretty sure you have a nasty concussion.”

Brygid blinked at me. Once. Twice.

I sighed. “Yeah, you definitely have a concussion. Do you have any potions you can take?”

She stared at me for a second, then nodded slowly. Brygid grabbed her back and dug through it, retrieving a normal, smooth cylindrical bottle with a silver capped cork.

-Tier One Potion: Restores 150 HP-

300->450/750

Popping the cork, Brygid drank it in a couple of slow gulps. After finishing it, she shuddered, a faint red glow surrounding her sternum, much like when I’d made Slade drink the Tier Two potion, though the light was dimmer to indicate the weaker strength of this potion. Her sternum popped completely back into place, her facial injuries closing themselves back up as well. With the increase in health, Brygid’s wings flared back to about 65% wholeness, flames licking the dirt near my knees.

I took Brygid’s head off of my lap, standing up and over her, reaching a hand down to help her get up. “You can turn those off now Little B. Fight’s over.”

Brygid looked up at me for a few seconds, then craned her head up, looking at Jackson. His lips curled into a snarky grin. She groaned, and let out a deep sigh.

“Uuuugh. God damn it. Alright.”

Grasping my arm near the wrist, Brygid’s wings flickered out of existence. I yanked her into a standing position. Brygid dusted herself off, then stormed towards Jackson, with me following close behind.

His face grew smugger and more condescending with every step she took. He held his sword out in front of himself, and dropped it. When it hit the ground, it and the shield on Jackson’s arm both disappeared in a cloud of light. Both hands now free, Jack crossed his arms and tilted his head back slightly, looking down his nose at Brygid in an act of practiced scorn.

“Oh? Do you have something you wish to say to me?”

Brygid ground her teeth together, clenching her hands tight enough to draw blood as her nails stabbed into the palm. “I surrender. You win the Duel.”

Jackson’s face took on a look of triumphant glee as he and Brygid were both surrounded by an aura of warm, golden light. A thin strand of the golden light snaked off of Brygid’s aura and drifted over to Jackson, connecting the two together. Light from Brygid’s aura began to flow through the strand and into Jack’s. Her aura dimmed while his grew brighter.

Brygid hawked up a loogie and spat it off to the side, growling. “God fucking damn it. Now I’m all the way back to the start of level seven.”

Jackson let out a bark of a laugh, clapping his hands together. “Hah! Now I’m this close to level ten! Oh, that is splendid!” He actually danced in placed a little bit, legitimately giddy. Then he turned towards the outside of the training field, where his two goons were still standing. “Hey, you two! Cease whatever buffoonery you’re up to, and get your asses over here!”

While the sentient meat cubes made their way over, Jackson turned back to us. With a smile, he swooped into an over the top bow directed at Brygid. “My lady Brygid, I fear we may have gotten the wrong side of each other for our first impressions. I assumed you were simply the usual, hot headed peasant woman.”

Brygid’s eyebrows deepened, casting a dark shadow over her face. I saw her trembling with restraint as he spoke.

Jackson continued, coming up from his bow with a twirl of his hand. “But after our Duel, I see I was wrong. You are in fact an incredibly generous person.” His smile turned into a sneer. “After all, few people are willing to simply hand over such a large amount of experience for practically no effort at all.”

Brygid screamed in anger, her wings flaring back to life out of nowhere. “Aaaaaugh! You fucking-!” She made to step forward, then caught herself, freezing in place. She closed her eyes and growled again, before shoving her hand in her bag. She withdrew a handful of copper coins, the terms of the Duel not exactly specific about the monetary reward, and chucked them as hard as she could straight at Jackson’s face.

“Fuck you, there’s your money. I’m done.”

With that, she promptly turned to face the exit, and stomped off, a raging wildfire on legs. I followed behind her at a safe distance, keeping my head turned to see how Jackson reacted.

A couple of coppers hit Jackson’s face and bounced off, doing no damage. The others sailed right past his head. Instead of getting angry though, he just laughed harder, completely ignoring his winnings on the ground. He put a hand up to his mouth, calling after us in a booming voice. “It’s been a pleasure making your acquaintance today!”

As Brygid and I walked away, he started barking orders at his goons, the two of us already forgotten.

——————————————————————————————————

Brygid faced the straw training dummy thirty feet in front of her, one of many that populated the new training ring we had moved to. Well, that Brygid had moved to anyway. I just followed in her wake.

She slammed her palms together in front of her with a ferocious shout. A tiny sphere of roaring fire materialized in the middle of her hands, rapidly ballooning in size. Once it was the size of a bowling ball, a multitude of feathers broke off from Brygid’s wings. The feathers moved in front of Brygid like they were being pulled on a string. One by one, the feathers sank into the fireball—quill first, subsuming into it.

Each one acted as an accelerant for the fireball, fueling another cycle of growth that ended with a fiery sphere around three feet in diameter. It was big. Kind of intimidating. Really intimidating, actually. I was standing a good ten feet behind her and I was still sweating from the heat coming off of that thing. It raged like a wild animal, boiling heat churning and swirling, lashing out at the air around it with claws of fire. Brygid visibly strained to keep the fireball contained, her body as taut as a steel cable.

Every second she held it, the fire grew denser. Hotter. Powerful air currents created by the fire whipped Brygid’s hair into a frenzy. Heat greatly distorted the air around her. Brygid yelled, her wings rearing back, then whipping forward, creating a huge draft of hot wind.

“Hah!”

The large fireball shot forward out of her hands, hurtling towards the straw dummy, a fiery meteor of death. It crossed the thirty feet in less than a second, hitting the dummy dead on.

*BOOM!*

As soon as the fireball collided with the dummy, it exploded, erupting into a massive conflagration at least ten feet wide, smoke rising in a small mushroom shaped cloud. A pressure wave spread from the epicenter, knocking my hair and clothes back even from forty feet away.

Hot DAMN!

I leapt into the air with a whoop, running up to Brygid, grabbing her arms and shaking her in excitement. “Holy shit Brygid! Talk about firepower!”

Brygid turned to face me. She was panting heavily, shoulders shaking, sweat running off of her face in heavy drops. More importantly, she was smiling. “Right? Tell me Jackson could have stood up to that.”

“I could, but I’d be lying. Fancy armor or not. I mean look, you even scorched the dummy a bit!” I said, pointing out the large patch of burnt straw on the dummy’s shoulder. Considering all of the Guild’s special training dummies had enchantments on them to make em’ about a billion times tougher than normal, that was more impressive than it sounded.

(I’m gonna avoid mentioning the fact that Jackson would never have just sat there and take it straight to his face. Don’t need to bring her back down.)

“Yeah, I sure did, didn’t I?” Brygid crossed her arms in front of her while looking back at the dummy, nodding her head and looking very pleased with herself.

“You feeling a little better then, Little B?”

She gave me a grin, and nodded her head. “Yeah, I’m all better now. Just needed to vent some frustration, you know? I mean, at the end of the day, I didn’t lose that much. Some copper—not a big deal at all—, a couple of reputation points on Ring Four—again, don’t really care—, and all the experience I had for this level. That’d normally be a pretty big deal, that was weeks of work. But,” She shrugged. “I’m not even that mad about it. We’ll get it back soon enough, since we’ll be adventuring now that you’ve……got……your……Blessing.”

Brygid stared at me, wide-eyed. Then her eyes lit up like stars, and she rushed forward, squeezing me in a tight embrace. “Ahhh! Holy shit you got your Blessing!” She bounced up and down, squeeing like a little schoolgirl. “That’s so exciting!”

I indulged in Brygid’s excitement for a second, letting her have her hug (She was definitely a hugger), then squirming out of it and pushing off of her. “Uh, yeah? I thought we established this already?”

She waved that off, wiggling her hand furiously. “No no no! Are you kidding me? Two words about it while some asshole was yelling at me is not ‘establishing’ anything! I have no idea what kind of Blessing you have, what it does, what the rank is, nothing! We need to fix that asap, come on!” Brygid looked around the training area, searching for…something. She found it quickly, grabbing my arm and yanking me to a spot far away from any one else in the yard. She sat down crossed leg in the dirt, patting the spot next to her for me.

“Come on, come on! Get down here and give me the deets! Tell me everything!”

I took a seat beside her and grinned, rubbing my hands together in preparation. “Alright, but I gotta warn you, it’ll take a little while. So, I go up to the Tower…”

Brygid stayed mostly quiet for the first part of the story; the normal part of the Trial. Well, besides slapping me on the back with a cheer when I killed the last imp. “Woo! Hell yeah man, I knew you’d kick ass once you finally got around to taking the Trial. So, what do you think? All that extra training worth it?”

I nodded my head seriously. “Oh, abso-fricken’-lutely. Especially because—” I told her about King Sam calling to me, the ranking limit for Mundanes, and everything to the end of my fight with Tobis. I mean everything too, including the part where he fucking kills me.

By the time I got to the end of part two, Brygid’s mouth was hanging open in disbelief. Steepling her hands under her nose, she stared at me for a long time, eyes searching me to see if I was serious or not. “So what you’re telling me is that you……died?”

I nodded my head.

Her face grew visibly confused. “You don’t look that dead to me Big E. Is this just some weird prank?”

“Haha, nope! Just listen to this shit.” As I told part three of the Trial story, my smile grew wider and wider. It was an insane experience to live, but hearing myself say it out loud made it sound ten times more ridiculous. Which was reflected in Brygid’s face. Her amazement quickly vanished, her face crumpled in doubt.

She crossed her arms. “So. Just to make sure I have this straight. A metallic copy of you choked you to death. Then, after you were killed, you found yourself floating in some mysterious void place. Then, you were contacted by some vague mysterious voice that LITERALLY called itself Mysterious Voice, and it brought you back to life.” She paused, staring dead at me, her voice dead-pan. “For fun.”

“Yep. That’s right.”

“Okay. Right. And then, you finished up your fight with your ‘metallic clone’ by exploding him. At which point His Majesty gives you an S rank Blessing. A. Fucking. S Rank.”

Brygid glared at me, stabbing me in the chest with her pointer finger. “ Are you fucking joking with me?! I don’t believe a word of that, Emmanuel! Did you actually not do that well? You know I wouldn’t judge you if you only did averagely.”

I threw up my hands defensively. “Wooooah now! Brygid, you know as well as I do that I’m not a liar, and I wouldn’t start lying about something this big. You can Examine me, take a look at the big ol’ S for yourself.”

Her glare didn’t fade a bit, but Brygid did tilt her head a little, conceding that point at least. She pulled out her Journal, flipping it open to a blank page before looking back to me. She raised her hand, which glowed for a brief second, as did the blank Journal page.

I saw text appear on the page. My character sheet. I leaned back, putting my hands in the dirt behind me for support, watching Brygid’s eyes to see how far down the sheet she was.

When she finished reading, Brygid didn’t say a single word. Her eyes flickered between me and her Journal, over and over again, her hands trembling. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, then snapped the book shut and put it away in her bag. When Brygid opened her eyes again, they shone with her usual fire, a huge smile spreading across her face. “Dude.”

“Right?”

She shook her head at me, laughing. “Man, why are you so extra broken though? All of your abilities are so good. I mean, besides the recoil. I think you might actually be able to beat me in a fight already.” She covered her face with her hands, making a mock disgusted noise. “Uuuugh! That’s not even close to fair. Fucking S-ranks.”

“Again, right? I’ve already been in a fight too. The dude was level eight.” I filled Brygid in on what happened in the alleyway with Slade. She just shook her head at that too.

“Wow. Somehow, I’m not even that surprised. So!” She started, her wings activating with a flash, then flapping to help her stand up in one smooth motion. She reached down, grabbing my arm and yanking me upright. “Now that we have that settled, and I’ve got proper warning that you’re gonna have a huuuuuuge ego for the rest of forever—”

I snorted at that. She wasn’t wrong though.

“How about we head down to the Guild, get you signed in as a true capital a Adventurer, and officially party up, huh?”

A shiver of adrenaline ran down my spine at that. For so many years being a real adventurer was just a dream, just a lofty goal that I ran for. Now it was really, really happening.

I could almost cry.

“Absolutely. Let’s go.”