We followed the torch path in silence. Nikk and the pets were well ahead of the group. Max came next. Wolfgang followed the elf a few yards in front of Hendrix, and I. Manalolz took up the rear far behind. The healer had been the one rushing things, but since our little talk, he’d been lagging and holding the group back. He’d also been mumbling an incoherent stream of harsh and bitter words.

Wolfgang halted and waited, looking me in the eyes as I approached. I nodded to Hendrix, letting the bard know that he should continue forward. He did. Wolfgang stayed still and silent while Hendrix moved on. He started walking again once we were in our own little silent zone between Hendrix and Manalolz. I followed.

“I just wanted to thank you,” the tank said. “I know I shouldn’t let the healer’s words get to me, but I suppose my weakening wasn’t only physical.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” I said. “No one wants to hear the kind of things he’s been saying.”

“Especially when he’s repeating what my mind’s been haunted with since my power left me.”

I was surprised by the sudden opening of feelings and wasn’t quite sure how to handle it. “At the end of the day, you kept aggro. I may not know much about this world, but from what I understand, that’s the main goal of the tank.”

“That’s nice of you to say,” Wolfgang said. “But the fact is, if a tank can’t mitigate the damage he takes, he’s worthless.”

We walked a short, wordless stretch before I found the courage to ask the question. “What happened to you?”

He said nothing. Instead, he continued walking with his head held high as if he hadn’t even heard me.

“Your weakening, as you call it,” I tried again, “how did it happen?”

“I heard you,” Wolfgang said. “It’s something I try to avoid talking about for obvious reasons, but I suppose if there is anyone I should open up to about it, it’s my guild master.”

It still felt wrong being referred to as a guild master, especially by such an experienced battler who’d spent a long career in the most challenging dungeons of the world. Wolfgang’s willingness to open up to me showed how much responsibility came with my position. Certain kinds of responsibilities I could have never predicted, as well.

“I was cursed,” Wolfgang said, “by an adventurer.”

It couldn’t be. “I thought adventurers couldn’t harm each other.”

“Unless they agree to duel,” Wolfgang said. “My guild and I had been quarreling with a rival guild. Their leader challenged me to a duel. ‘One good fight to settle our differences.’ He’d said. I gladly accepted. In a fair fight, I knew I could beat him. He was a support class. A necromancer.”

“I’m guessing it wasn’t a fair fight,” I said.

“I should have known he’d have something up his sleeve,” Wolfgang said. “I was blinded by my pride and my desire to defeat him. I accepted like a fool.”

“He did this to you?” I asked. “The sheep thing, I mean? Are there many Drakkons who’ve been… who’ve had this happen to them?”

“Just me.” He kept a proud, confident expression as he said it. “What I didn’t know about my rival was that he and his guild, in their fruitless search for Kaloriann, had found a different treasure altogether. A curse item.”

“What’s that?”

Wolfgang laughed. “The bard warned me about your questions.”

“I apologize,” I said with an awkward smile. “This is all still so new to me.”

“Not to worry,” Wolfgang said as we passed another torch. “I’d be more concerned if you asked nothing. At least you want to learn.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Maybe you can tell that to Hendrix.”

Wolfgang chuckled. Manalolz hadn’t stopped mumbling from behind us. “To answer your question,” the tank said, “There are many things hidden in the world. Not all of them are clues to finding the Dark Lady. You can find armor, weapons, potions, rare raw materials to craft with, but you can also find spells. They’re usually in the form of a scroll that burns after one use, and they are extremely rare. My rival and his guild had found one and decided to keep it quiet. They didn’t reveal it until he used it in our duel.”

“He found a spell that specifically turned Drakkon into sheep?” I asked. “What use is that to an adventurer other than ruining a tank’s life?”

“I suppose God’s intended use of the scroll is to neutralize the power of a difficult Drakkon boss in Snagroot Jungle,” Wolfgang said. “But my rival had other plans.”

“Is there any way to reverse—“

“I’ve been looking for a way since it happened. I’ve poured over more than half of the tomes in the library, reading each line twice to make sure I didn’t miss anything. Nothing. I’m still hopeful, but it gets harder every day.”

“If you found a way to reverse it, would you regain your former strength?”

“That’s what I’m hoping, but to be honest, I don’t know anything about what’s happened to me.”

“Say you found a cure,” I said, “and you did regain your former power, would you leave us to reform your old guild? I wouldn’t blame you if you did. I only asked to know if we should be looking for a more permanent tank or not.”

He laughed at that. “You’d have to pay me to ever fight alongside those traitors again. The moment I lost my power, they replaced me, and I barely heard from any of them since. The loneliness and abandonment hurt more than my fallen glory.”

“Well, we’d be glad to have you along, whether as a sheep or a Drakkon.”

Wolfgang smiled. “You’re a quality leader, Billington. I’d be honored to fight for you, even at my full strength. Sure, you don’t know much, but that will easily change with time. You are curious, and so you will learn. How you stood up for me back there, too…” He nodded, and I didn’t want to stare, but it looked like tears formed in his eyes. “That was good of you.”

“Reached the end!” Nikk shouted from the head of the party.

We all grouped up where the toadkin and the pets had stopped. The view was enough to take one’s breath away. Ahead of us was a broad mountain, the color of rust. To the left was a massive drop where a few wisps of cloud swirled between us and the forest below. My knees shook at the realization of exactly how high the trees we’d been walking on had been.

“I’ve heard of the infamous ledge,” Hendrix said. “Words don’t do it justice.”

“We’ve got to walk on that?” Manalolz’s frantic voice echoed off the side of the rusty mountain.

I didn’t know what they were talking about until I saw it. My jaw nearly dropped. The path of torches led to the only possible route off the canopy, a long, winding road, thinner than the width of two of my feet that hugged the side of the mountain and went on for as far as I could see.

Max went ahead and took a few steps onto the road. Just watching him turned my knees to mush. “It’s not quite as bad as it looks.”

“Easy for you to say, elf,” Manalolz said.

Buttons followed without question. Nikk apparently trusted his elven friend as he was the first of the party to step onto the treacherous road. The toadkin didn’t weigh much, but his stepping onto the road caused a small flurry of rocks to roll down the cliff into the green abyss below. Nikk was slender and nimble, and even he struggled to hug the wall and keep from the edge. How was a stocky dwarf like me supposed to handle this?

Wolfgang went next. He faced the wall and walked with his plate-booted feet angled to both sides. Manalolz pushed by me and followed the tank. I scoffed. The push was unnecessary. I was in no hurry to step onto that ledge.

“After you, buddy,” Hendrix said. He looked around with a stern face, surveying the area, avoiding my eyes.

“You’re scared of it, too, aren’t you?” I smirked.

He narrowed his eyes and looked at me, acting as though he’d barely heard what I said. “Scared? No. No. I was just, uh… you know. Gotta let the guild master go first.”

“Right,” I said. “I’ll go first, then. At least I’ll have someone more nimble watching my back.”

The bard smiled and nodded.

I let out a sharp exhale, inched my way to where the canopy ended, and the narrow road began. If the heights caused my knees to shake from far, they might as well have melted them off when staring off the edge. The forest was so far below that it looked more like a finger-painting.

“Well?” Hendrix said.

“You’re welcome to go right ahead before me,” I said, not taking my eyes off the near-endless drop.

The bard was silent and stayed where he was.

I shook the nerves from my limbs and stared at the road ahead. The others had made some decent progress, but it was slow going. I’d faced wolves, cultists, Mallar, gnolls, and the Sun-Touched’s brother. I couldn’t let a road be my undoing.

I stepped onto it. My churning gut nearly leapt from my mouth. The road was barely wider than my foot, if at all. I employed Wolfgang’s technique of hugging the wall, except I was sure I didn’t look as calm or practiced as the tank. I didn’t only hug the wall. I snuggled it and almost lay against it like some kind of standing bed.

Hendrix laughed from behind me.

“Let’s see you try,” I called back.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” he said. “Just gotta wait ‘till you make a bit more progress is all.”

I could feel the bits of rock giving way beneath me. Their tumbling echoes climbed to my ears and would likely haunt my dreams for years to come. My mouth was dry, and I could barely feel my legs. I didn’t dare look back, but by the sounds of additional tumbling pebbles behind me, I knew Hendrix had finally joined the rest of us on the ledge.

The only comfort I found was in the touch of sun-baked rock on my palms. A warm breeze came up from the forest. It was the only time I was ever unwelcoming of a warm breeze. I nearly reached down to touch my legs to make sure they were still there. The only thing I could still feel below the belt was the weight of the golden book in my pocket. I focused my thoughts on it. The princess chose me. Perhaps she’d give me the strength to get past the road.

“Help!” Hendrix’s voice was shrill and desperate.

I whipped my head back to find him hanging off the ledge, hanging on with the tips of his fingers. My fear was gone. I looked back ahead, peeled one sweaty palm from the mountain, shoved dusty fingers between my lips, and whistled at the rest of the party.

Wolfgang was already on his way. How he’d managed to pass Manalolz, I’ll never know. The tank was coming at me quick on his way to the bard. I didn’t panic or freeze as Hendrix was the only thing on my mind. I turned away from Wolfgang and moved quickly on the road back towards the canopy.

Hendrix wailed as he clung to the ledge for his life. A thought struck me. If we let Hendrix fall, there’d be no way to retrieve his soul egg. It would be a true death. He’d already had one before. He’d be down to eight left before he was gone for good.

I increased the width of my steps, no longer fearing the ledge or the drop. I hesitated a moment once I reached the hanging bard. Letting go of the wall and crouching over the ledge was not something I looked forward to doing, but I had to do it right. My falling over the ledge wouldn’t help anyone.

I crouched, facing away from the wall, and nearly lost my balance at the sight of the land below. The forest somehow rushed up at me and pulled away at the same time. My gut heaved like a rolling barrel and nearly reintroduced Hendrix to my lunch.

Two of Hendrix’s fingers lost grip. His wailing loudened. “Get me up! Please, get me up.”

“Hang in there,” I said. “I know it’s hard, but you need to relax.” I wrapped strong fingers around one of his wrists. “You won’t fall, alright? Wolfgang’s on his way. We’ll pull you up, I promise.”

Hendrix closed his eyes and breathed heavily through his mouth. I looked down to find his feet dangling in dead air. They swayed lifelessly with nothing but miles of sky below them. I had to look away. My balance was already wavering, and staring into the abyss didn’t help. I kept my eyes fixed on the bit of ground at my feet and prayed for Wolfgang to arrive.

It felt like hours, but the tank finally crouched down next to me and grabbed Hendrix’s other wrist with both hands. I abandoned the safety of the wall behind me with my free hand so that I could have the same grip as Wolfgang. I exchanged a look with the tank. He nodded.

“Hendrix, we’re pulling you up now,” I said. “I’ll need you to open your eyes. There isn’t much room once you get up here.”

He opened them, staring upward at us. They were glazed with tears, but he kept his composure, a lot more than I would have in his situation.

“One,” Wolfgang started the count. “Two…”

Without needing the third word, Wolfgang and I pull Hendrix from certain death. The bard was light, but with only a small ledge to balance our weight, pulling him up was difficult. I overcompensated for my fear of the fall by leaning back against the wall many times. It kept me safe, but it limited my strength for reeling in the bard.

After a few grunts and one last panicked shriek, we pulled the bard up onto the ledge and lay him between us. Hendrix lay on his side, facing the wall. He threw an arm and a leg against the wall so that he could lie as flat against it as possible.

I couldn’t tell if he was weeping or just shaking, but either one was understandable. I stayed still, deciding to give Hendrix enough time to recover from the ordeal, uncaring of what certain rushers in the group might have felt about the decision.

“Is he unharmed?” Max asked from the head of the group.

“He’s fine,” I said.

Both Nikk and Max looked back with grave concern in their eyes. Manalolz leaned his back against the wall and gazed out over the horizon, casually stroking his moustache in his flowing pink robe. It didn’t matter. We’d finish this dungeon, and I’d never have to deal with him again. What mattered now was Hendrix.

“Thank you,” I said to Wolfgang.

“Of course,” he said. “That would’ve been a true death. I’ve had my fair share of those. They don’t feel good.”

“How many have you had?” I said, “if you don’t mind me asking, that is.”

“Thirteen,” he said without hesitation.

“But…”

“We have ten true deaths before we’re gone for good,” Wolfgang said, “but there are ways to replenish some we’ve lost. It’s tough to do, but when you’re in a strong guild like I was, it’s definitely doable.”

I looked down to the quivering bard. “We’re going to have to become a strong guild, then.”

Wolfgang grinned. “That’s the spirit.” He got up and carefully made his way back down the road. “Tell the bard to take as long as he needs.” He stepped past Manalolz and froze when they were eye to eye. “We’re in no rush.” He continued onward.

“I don’t need long,” Hendrix said.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “No one’s going to think any less of you. Take how much time you need. It wasn’t falling off your bed you were dealing with.”

He nodded and snuggled harder against the wall.

Time passed, and Hendrix showed no signs of recovering from the shock. Manalolz let out an audible sigh of impatience. I glared at him, but the healer’s eyes wandered over the scenery.

“I can’t,” Hendrix said.

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t continue. I can’t walk down the road.”

“Are you hurt?” I looked him up and down. “Your HP is fine, and I don’t see any injuries.”

“I’m scared,” he spoke quietly. “I’m too scared to walk along the road again.”

“It’s understandable,” I said. “But we need you.”

“No, you don’t.”

“What are you talking about? Of course, we do.”

“I’m just a bard,” he said. “You can finish this without me. I’ll still get the experience. Don’t worry. I’ll make it up for you in the next one.”

“Stop talking nonsense,” I said. “We need you. Your songs play a pivotal role in our fights. You’re the only support class. That would be like continuing without the tank or the healer.”

Hendrix laughed, but it wasn’t a joyful laugh. “I know what you’re trying to do, but you have to remember that I more than anyone know how little you know. You wanna know the truth? There are two support classes. Bard and necromancer. Do you want to know the one thing the top one-hundred or so guilds have in common? They have a necromancer as their support class. No guild that’s worth anything employs a bard. No. You don’t need me.”

“He’s speaking a lot,” Max said. “His tone is quite somber. Is there something wrong?”

Those elf ears could hear a lot clearer than I thought.

“Don’t tell them that I’m scared,” Hendrix whispered.

“He’s too frightened to continue,” I called to Max.

Manalolz let out an exaggerated laugh.

“Ignore him,” I said. “I told them because we’re a team. Your fear is just as crippling as any wound. You wouldn’t be too embarrassed to tell them about a wound, so why this?”

“Because this is in my head,” Hendrix said. “I know I can physically walk the road, but I just… can’t.”

“We make fence!” Nikk said. His toadkin gurgle barely echoed though his voice was loud.

“Quiet, you fool,” Max snapped at him. “I’ve yet to agree to your suggestion.”

“What’s this fence you speak of?” Wolfgang asked.

Max stayed silent.

Nikk took the opportunity to speak. “Max build nice things with wood. Fence could protect us from fall. We have wood.”

“Are you saying the elf is a woodworker?” Wolfgang said.

“Architect,” Nikk said.

Wolfgang sighed. “That wouldn’t help us. Max can come up with the plans for the fence, but we’d need a woodworker to build it.”

“I woodwork,” Nikk said.

Wolfgang stared at him with a blank expression. Nikk returned the expression and ran a long tongue over his eyes.

“Why do you object to this idea?” Wolfgang shifted his eyes to Max.

“Long have we toiled to gather a specific amount of Dark Talon wood,” Max said. “We have plans that will need the lumber. We cannot waste any on trivial endeavors.”

“This isn’t trivial,” I said. “Your fence is needed to get through this dungeon. If you want the rewards from defeating it, you’ll need to sacrifice some of that wood.”

“My objections lie with the fact that it is not needed,” Max said. “The bard can easily rise and finish the walk like the rest of us. Well, perhaps not easily, considering his mental state, but he does possess the physical capacities to overcome the challenge he fears.”

“I’m sure he possessed the physical capacities to pull himself back up over the ledge, too,” I said. “Should we have just left him to fend for himself? Or are we a team?”

Max’s large chin quivered as he pondered in silence. He sniffed hard and swallowed. “We’re a team.” He furrowed his brow and drew a long blue scroll from his pocket like a sword.