Ethan lay awake in his bed. He’d been there for hours after Mihal and Jerry helped him back to his room.

How the hell is David even here? He wondered to himself. He didn’t look like he’d been taking the leap to find me, he was still a Paladin. Maybe Arianna’s friend who saw me before helped him…

He couldn’t even bring himself to think that maybe Alera had been the one to bring his friend to where he’d hidden. She’d been very clear in her disdain for not just him, but their entire guild.

Why couldn’t they just leave me alone? He raged to himself as he rolled over in his bed, clutching a pillow to his chest. They were safe! Paul wasn’t going to come after them with me gone! They wouldn’t end up like Tae-Won!

Ethan wished that he could call on Vewa to help him. He needed the calming touch of the Vættr of Water more than ever before. But their absence was just another punch in the hole in his gut. Another reminder of what a failure he was.

The sun sank low, casting shadows across his room as he wallowed in his depression.

A knock at the door woke him as he drifted in and out of sleep.

“Come in,” he called out hoarsely. “Come in!” He repeated, after clearing his throat.

“Ethan, are you awake, my friend?” Mihal’s bushy brown mustache preceded him as he poked his head into Ethan’s room.

“I just wanted to check on you,” Mihal entered the room and took a seat on the rickety wooden chair by the small table next to the bed.

“I’m alive,” Ethan said quietly, rolling over to face the guard. “Best as I got at the moment.”

“Good,” Mihal smiled, the ends of his mustache rising. “Do you mind if I talk to you for a minute?”

When Ethan didn’t answer, Mihal spoke again.

“I wasn’t born here in Grassmere, you know?” He said quietly as he twisted the end of his mustache.

“Really?” Ethan hadn’t been sure what Mihal was going to say, but a story of his youth wasn’t even on the list. He always assumed that due to the phased nature of the starting town, every NPC there had just existed only for that instance and had nothing past that in their histories.

“I lived in a small farming village, not far from Startesgarde,” Mihal continued. “Back when Startesgarde wasn’t what it’s grown to be, of course.”

Ethan nodded. He knew Startesgarde had once been only a small town. The influx of players had grown the city. It’s close proximity to the Tower made it an ideal location for most players to want to live there.

“Why’d you leave?” He asked, the conversation helping distract him from his emptiness.

“I wanted more,” Mihal answered happily. “I didn’t want to be a farmer, like my father and grandfather. I wanted to see the world.”

“What did your family say?”

“Would you believe that they were supportive?” Mihal looked at him. “They loved me, and wanted the best for me. They knew I wouldn’t be happy living a quaint pastoral life, so they encouraged me to do what I felt was right.”

“I had only been gone a few months before I met Jerry,” He smiled at the fond memory of the first time he met his husband. “He was from here, but wanted the same as me. Travel and see the world.” He paused again. “Of course, I wanted adventure and he wanted to learn about brewing. But we ended up working well together.”

Ethan listened patiently as Mihal regailed him with his story.

“After two years together, we were madly in love and he asked me to marry him,” Mihal’s right hand absentmindedly rubbed the wedding ring on his left. “Of course, I said yes.” He nodded.

“Of course,” Ethan agreed with him, pushing himself up on his elbows.

“He wanted to meet my family,” the guard continued, looking suddenly sad. “I had met his, of course, they welcomed me with open arms. But in two years, I had never taken him to meet mine.”

“Why not?” Ethan asked, suspecting the reason before Mihal answered.

“In my little town, two men marrying weren’t accepted,” Mihal frowned. “And I was terrified about what my family would say. How my father, mother and grandfather would react.”

Ethan stayed quiet. Even back in the real world, there were groups of people who couldn’t accept that homosexuality was natural and loving. Anger rose inside of him. He hated bigots, both in game and out.

“What did they say?” He asked coldly, trying to make his anger for his friend.

“You know what?” Mihal looked at him and smiled. “They loved him. Unconditionally. The only questions my grandfather asked him were ‘do you love my grandson?’ And ‘are you willing to love and support him, no matter what he goes through and through whatever he wants?’”

The answer had obviously been yes, so Ethan remained quiet.

“Then he hugged him and said ‘Welcome to the family, Grandson,” Mihal smiled slightly as a tear ran down his own cheek. “My entire family accepted him, and me, for who we are. Because they love us.”

“When we had our ceremony, they insisted we have it at our family's farm.” Mihal continued, “the farm we had owned for generations. I married the love of my life in the place that my great-grandfather’s great-great-grandfather had owned, with both of our entire families there to celebrate and encourage us.”

“What did the town say?” Ethan asked, his depression making him look for any possible negative to this sweet story.

“Not a fucking word,” Mihal said sternly. “My family is so well respected in our little town, they made sure word got around that anyone who couldn’t accept me and my husband would no longer be tolerated to even live in the same town as them.”

“Did anyone?” Ethan asked, sitting up straighter and leaning on his knees.

Alternate:

“Some did,” Mihal pursed his lips in frustration. “Not everyone will change immediately, there are always those who hold onto hatred because that’s all they know.”

“Surprisingly, no,” the guard answered. “Because that’s the thing about people, you can know someone you entire life, think you know exactly who they are and what they will do, and they will still surprise you.”

“Mihal, why did you tell me this story?” Ethan asked, unsure of his friend’s reasoning for suddenly sharing so much.

“Because you’re hurting,” Mihal crossed his arms over his chest and looked into Ethan’s eyes. “Because I know you think you’re protecting your friends by being here, you wouldn’t stop shouting it. But I want you to know that sometimes, you don’t need to protect them. They will love you no matter who you are. The way I tried to protect both Jerry and my family.”

“Mihal, I-“

“It ate me up inside, Ethan” Mihal’s patient voice interrupted him. “Trying to protect Jerry from them, and my family from what people would say about their son and his husband. But I was wrong.”

“It’s not the same,” Ethan said sadly, looking down at the pillow between his legs. “They’re in actual physical danger if I’m with them.”

“Do you know for sure they aren’t with you here?” The guard asked him, cutting directly to a worry that Ethan had forced down. “And wouldn’t you all be safer together?”

Ethan said nothing, tears rolled down his cheeks, dropping onto his dirty black pants and bed.

“I’ll leave you to get some rest,” Mihal said as he rose from the chair, his metal armor clinking. “I’ll let Jerry know to send some food up in a little while.”

“Thanks, Mihal,” Ethan responded quietly before rolling back over.

I get what he was trying to say, Ethan thought as he stared out of the window into the night sky. But it’s not the same. Paul will literally torture all of them because of me.

One of the friendly bartenders brought him a bowl of thick venison stew a short time later, apparently Mihal had made feeding Ethan one of his first priorities. He ignored it as he continued wallowing in his dark thoughts.

His lupine senses caught a whiff of the pack they had encountered earlier.

He turned his head, flattening his pointed ears in sadness as he saw his injured pack mates.

he lowered his muzzle in shame. The rival pack had been larger in size and numbers when they’d approached his own pack during a feast on a freshly slain deer.

He had acted aggressively to defend their kill and they had successfully driven them away, only to return in greater numbers.

Now, the tan one was injured. The grey and white ones, gone.

He rose from where he’d been sleeping and looked at the remaining members of his pack. he thought, as he slinked away.

Their scent was easy to track. his thoughts were grim as he followed the smell of the invading wolf pack through the underbrush.

As he crested a hill, he could see his enemies in a clearing. Their leader, larger and reddish brown in color sat watching his pack mates squabble over the bony remains of a kill.

He stopped just inside the clearing and howled, his call a challenge to the wolves in front of him. The four brown wolves immediately stopped their bickering and turned towards him, their ears perked at his call.

Slowly, he moved closer to them, his teeth bared as he growled. A bark from the rival leader sent his four underlings scurrying back. The leader slowly crept towards him, his own teeth bare and threatening.

In a grey flash, he charged at the brown enemy wolf, his claws ripped the soft dirt as he cleared the area.

The leader dodged his predictable lunge, swatting him with a massive paw and knocking him to the ground. He got back to his feet and lunged again, and again the larger brown wolf dodged his attack.

He felt white hot pain as his rival's jaws clamped down hard on his neck. He tried to break free, but only succeeded in ripping his own flesh against the brown wolf’s fangs.

Howls echoed across the area and the familiar scents of his pack mates mingled with the smell of his own blood. he struggled harder and the brown wolf slammed his front paws down, pinning him to the ground.

He could see his pack mates racing towards him, he could hear their growls of anger. But before they could reach him, the brown wolf’s packmates intercepted them. His smaller packmates were quickly subdued. He watched as the brown wolves ripped their throats out one my one.

The large brown wolf standing on him released his jaws, allowing him some movement.

Lightening fast, the pain returned as the brown wolf sank its fangs into his own throat and ripped.

The enemy pack retreated as he bled to death, leaving him among the corpses of the pack he’d failed to protect.

was all he could think as he struggled to breathe.

In front of him, the shrubs and bushes began to shake as something moved through them. Through his dimming vision, he was able to make out the form of a massive doe, it’s eyes glowed in green light.

“Úlfeóinn, you have abandoned your pack,” Ve’s voice was disapproving and sad as it flooded his mind while he lay dying on the ground. “But as I told you once before, they are your strength.”

Ethan’s heart was pounding when he bolted upright. He reached up hesitantly, he could still feel the teeth of the brown wolf around his throat. He could still smell the blood of his dying packmates.

“Was it only a dream?” He asked aloud, as he tried to calm himself down. It had felt more real than reality. His memories as the wolf felt like they had always been there as the dream started, the death of him and his packmates had been especially brutal.

But that was Ve at the end, I didn’t dream her. He rubbed his temples and took several deep breaths. The sun was shining brightly through his window. He could hear the townspeople going about their daily business. She came to me, Reás said she’d been worried about me. That has to mean something?

He sat in his bed for several minutes, contemplating the bizarre vision he’d just woken from. Ve’s message was not subtle. He’d left his “pack” and now all were suffering.

But what can I do now? I abandoned them, they won’t forgive me. His head dropped down and rested on his knees.

“Have you tried talking to them?” Reás asked from the bottom of his bed, embers forming around them as the heat from the Vættr’s body singed the blankets.

“What do I even say?” He asked the spirit, comforted by the fact they would even visit him after the way he treated them last time they talked.

“You could always start with an apology.”

“Reás,” Ethan looked at the Vættr, tears in his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“Definitely a good start,” the fox grinned at him, and touched their paw to his hand. A burning ember surged through his skin at the point of contact and raced from his arm to his chest. He felt his entire body burn in comforting heat. “Passion isn’t the only fire inside of you, hope can come from even the smallest spark. Don’t let that fire die, again.” The black fox lowered its head in a nod and vanished in a cloud of smoke.

Emboldened by the Vættr’s visit, Ethan leapt from his bed. The hole, the emptiness, inside him was still present. But for the first time in a month, he could feel himself outside of it, looking at it and saying “I’m not falling in.”