Apparently we had lost track of time under the mountain. It is a warm early spring morning, the sun has recently risen, and the birds are calling to one another. My mind says it should be afternoon, but the light begs to differ.

When Briareth sees the green grass he whoops and lunges toward it, bouncing and laughing as he rolls down the hill. I follow along at a much more sedate pace.

We travel till the sun reaches its zenith before stopping for lunch, even though my stomach was declaring that lunchtime had come much earlier. Briareth goes foraging while I set up camp near a stream and fill our bowls with water to drink. Suddenly, I hear a soft familiar nicker coming from the woods. I glance up and stare as Myrddin trots out calmly, and walks up to the campsite I had made. She sits herself down and starts to graze on some nearby grass. I’m dumbfounded. How did she find her way out? She ran away before we met Smay!

She turns to look at me and stares into my eyes for a little too long. I feel rather unnerved and am the first to look away.

“Briareth will be overjoyed to see you.” I comment to her. She snorts in response. I’m not quite sure what else to do. We wait for a while longer for Briareth. Finally he comes out of the forest, leaves and roots crushed in his fists.

“Briareth!” I call, waving. He spots me and waves back, heading toward us. Then he spots Myrddin and starts to run. I laugh as he rushes to her, petting her and cooing over her after he tosses the plants in my direction. She gives him a look that even to my eyes clearly says, ‘what took you so long?’ I study the leaves and roots for a bit, finally washing them and sticking them between two slices of Smay’s bread for a sandwich, and watch as Briareth coos over his horse.

When he is finally done I offer him a sandwich and we both eat our lunch and then start traveling again. Now that we have Myrddin and all our supplies back, I expect the going will be a lot easier. But not all things can be solved with a lighter load on our backs. Soon after we start up again, we reach a small river.

“Wow, that's fast.” Briareth says, watching it toss up spray as it hurdles past us.

“Too fast and rocky for Myrddin I think. We should probably head downstream to find a wider, slower, and shallower area where it would be safe to ford the river.”

“Yes.” Briareth agrees sadly. “We could probably make it, but not Myrddin.” He starts walking downstream and I follow him. I see his mournful face and guess at what is getting him down.

“Don’t worry Briareth, we knew this would happen when we took Myrddin before the mountain. We’ll just have to find another way.”

“But it’s not just this river I’m worried about. There are more up ahead. Big rivers that even we won’t be able to cross without a boat.”

“Are there still Elves fighting in this area?” I ask.

“Last I knew, yes.” Briareth replies, “Why?”

“Then we can ask for an escort, if we can find them.”

“You think they’ll have soldiers to spare?”

“Well, I’m sure they will at the request of a King’s Archer and the dead Prince.” I shrug and grin at him. “They’ll probably even have enough room for Myrddin if you explain her importance to you.”

“You're right Faladel. I just worry too much.” Briareth smiles at me, immediately satisfied.

I chuckle at the irony of his statement. “Not nearly as much as I do Briareth. If you knew all the things I worried about you would collapse from the stress of it.”

We continue on in silence. Eventually we come to a part of the river we can all cross. Briareth brightens enormously as he leads Myrddin through a shallow spot. I smile as well as I notice a familiar rock. The tilted grinning stone, next to a pool that the other cadets and I would bathe in when we were in training. I know this place.

I’ve been disoriented since we left the underground tunnel, but if my memory is correct, we should be right near Lake Tabahi’s ear. Which means that we can be home in a couple of days if we find a boat to cross the right tail and sail down the left. We just need to get through where the battlegrounds used to be.

We cross the stream and continue on through the woods, when suddenly Myrddin nickers, stops, and refuses to go forward, no matter how much Briareth encourages her. So we wait to hear what startled her. A minute passes, then another thirty seconds of silence. Finally Myrddin shakes her head and continues forward. Then we all hear it, a horn blast, loud and long. It sounds familiar, could it be an Elfin signal? But for what? The signals have changed since I was in training. Was that a battle challenge? An announcement of a scouting party’s return? A warning of Dwarves in the nearby vicinity? “Briareth, what was the signal?” I ask. He should know.

Briareth scratches his head. “Um, let me think… Returning scout party?”

“Why are you asking me? I've been gone for twenty years.”

Briareth blinks at me, like he’d forgotten that fact. “Good point.”

We meet up with the Elves quite suddenly. We round a corner and they are right ahead of us. I’m really glad they weren’t Dwarves or we would be overwhelmed immediately, making for a very short end to our journey.

“Briareth what are you doing on this side of the mountains?” Calls one of the Elves. Briareth grins eagerly pinpointing his friend at the front of the group.

“Nothing much, Nerilamin, just returning home with a job well done, and a bit extra to boot. This is my new friend, the formerly dead Faladel Mithrandir.” The Elf startles, quickly glancing at me. I blink at him calmly as he studies me. Nerilamin has short brown hair, grass green eyes, and is wearing an officer's uniform. I think his badge denotes him as a lieutenant, but I’d have to get a closer look. I give him a small smile as Briareth continues chattering on.

“Hey, meeting up with you like this is great! I’ve been out of the country for a bit, and need to catch up. Could we bunk at your camp perhaps? Then get an escort out of the battle zone?” Briareth pauses, “Is this even still a battle zone?” He asks, looking confused. Nerilamin stops staring at me, seemingly content with his evaluation, and responds to Briareth.

“Of course you're coming to camp with us tonight. This is still a battlezone, the lines have moved back and forth a bit, but it is pretty much in the same place as it was five years ago right now. We're currently at a standstill and don’t have any troops to spare,” here he makes air quotes with his fingers “but as it’s you and the ‘dead’ Prince Faladel, I’m sure we can give you something.”

“Righty-ho, let's go!” Says Briareth, I try to remember where I’ve heard that before, but Nerilamin gets it immediately and laughs as if it is an old joke between them.

“Does Raegel still say that? Of course he does! That’s his catchphrase.” Nerilamin says a second before my brain pulls up the phrase from earlier this afternoon. Nerilamin grins, probably remembering some long ago event. I feel left out, but these are old friends. I rationalize myself out of the dark emotion. I bet Briareth will feel left out when I greet my parents. It is how it is.

We go to the camp and are met by curious, tired, soldiers. I wonder how long they have been on the front lines. Briareth greets a few and they smile at him, a new light coming to their eyes. Briareth hands Myrddin off to one of them with instructions to take very good care of her. The Elf smiles reassuringly and pats Myrddins nose as he takes her away. Nerilamin leads us on, and I notice some of the Elves follow us. It isn’t only men in this camp, some of the fighters are women too. A rare sight, but I suppose some of the camps would be mixed gender, especially in areas where the army is stretched thin.

“Where are we going?” Briareth asks Nerilamin. “It feels like we are walking around in circles.”

“The camp was designed like a spiral, so that’s no surprise.” Nerilamin grins. “I’m taking you to the command pavilion. There we can ask if you can stay the night and for an escort in the morning.”

“Great!” Briareth exclaims.

We soon reach the pavilion, and Nerilamin goes in while Briareth chats to the guards outside. I study the camp silently. Everyone goes about their business almost the exact same way as they did twenty years ago when I was in the army. It is so strange. I feel like so much should have changed. I have changed so much, so shouldn’t the rest of the world have changed at the same time? Is that egotistical? I changed so quickly that I left the world’s change in the dust. Is there any room for this new me, in my old world? Wandering past all the familiarity makes me feel like I’m in a dream. Past me could have been any one of those soldiers we had just walked by..

No, that’s not right. If I had been any of them, I would have died long ago in battle instead of being captured. All these soldiers could die tomorrow, but even twenty years ago, I was protected because of my heritage. I feel a surge of guilt. Even if it didn’t feel like any sort of protection, I was alive while all my comrades died. Is that a result of favoritism, or bullying? I’d love to say bullying, but the dead would probably beg to differ.

I look back at Briareth as he laughs at a joke the guard made. I wonder what he would do in my position? Something other than what I’m doing, that's for sure. Nerilamin exits the pavilion, and calls to us, “Briareth, Prince Faladel, you're good to stay the night! Follow me and I’ll bring you to the guest tents. You can put down any stuff you might have there.”

“Excellent!” Briareth cheers, then he gives his guard friend a high five and skips over to Nerilamin. I follow more slowly.

“Thank you.” I tell him when we reach our tents.

“My pleasure Prince.” He replies. It’s strange to hear my title after so long hearing only ‘Elf’ precluded normally by an insult, or later with Briareth just ‘Faladel.’ I place the bowls, the only things I have, down in my tent. Another strange thing, Briareth and I have our own tents, and I have nothing to place in mine. Even when I was in the army I had keepsakes, sentimental stuff that I would take with me when I was assigned to a new battalion. Another mix of new and old. These gloomy thoughts are tiring. I lay down on the army issued cot, stare at the ceiling of the tent for a while, listening to the bustle of busy Elves outside, and eventually fall asleep.

I am woken up by Briareth coming in and shaking me calling “Faladel! Food!”. It is late now, darkness came early today. The overcast skies don’t help any I suppose. I roll out of bed and straighten my shirt, quickly pushing my hair into its proper position. Gravity will do the rest. I follow Briareth outside and Nerilamin leads us to the- aptly named -mess hall.

We are given food and drink, merry company, and afterwards a chance to tell our tale. Briareth climbs onto the table with much encouragement from the crowd, and begins to tell his side of the story. Starting with receiving a letter embossed with a royal seal, including a daring disguise, a waltz under the Dwarven army’s nose (literally), a stroll through a Dwarven town, a fiery romance with a barmaid, being accused of being a Dwarven desserter, finding a prince in chains, hearing a plot to kill said prince, being unable to explain who he is to said prince because of bureaucracy, trying to prove to the prince that he is on his side even though he had been overheard talking about killing the prince, setting off a bomb so he could escape but then realizing that the prince was going deeper into the mine instead of escaping, nearly having the whole mine collapsing on their heads. Then, finally leaving with said prince, the prince confronting him about his identity, meeting a dragon, realizing that the prince can cook, etc. It is hilarious, slightly out of order, definitely over exaggerated in some places and maybe outright lies in others, and so distinctly Briareth at some points that I have no choice but to laugh.

“Briareth!” Calls one of the Elves in the crowd, as Briareth takes his bows on the table. Briareth doesn’t seem to hear him and the Elf hesitates nervously, then encouraged by one of his friends he cries out again, “Briareth!”

“What? Did someone call?” Briareth shouts into the crowd, “If anyone has questions, ask now!” The Elves who surround the one calling for him, wave their arms to catch his attention. “What is it?” Briareth asks.

“What was in the letter? What were you originally supposed to do?” shouts the nervous Elf.

“Can’t say that!” Briareth shouts back “It’s classified!”

“Tell us! Tell us!” the friend group begs, this starts up a chant, and soon all the Elves are calling for Briareth to tell them.

“Sorry Fellas!” Briareth shouts, “I’m not allowed to say anything until I’m ten miles into Elven territory with the job done. If any of you would like to be on our escort tomorrow though, I can tell you then!” All the Elves groan in disappointment.

Clever, I think. He has them hooked, and will get a ton of volunteers this way.

“Now it is time for the Prince to tell his story! Don’t worry folks, he can’t be thrown in jail for saying classified information because he’s legally dead!”

“Doesn’t mean he can’t be imprisoned posthumously!” bellows Nerilamin. The crowd whoops in appreciation.

“Briareth! I never agreed to this!” I shout at him out of the crowd.

“Well now you have to! I promised them a story!” Briareth calls back. I laugh, as the audience chants for a story, I guess telling my tale can’t hurt. I’ll keep my thoughts to myself, but they can have my actions.

So I tell my side of the story, my capture, my imprisonment, hearing a plot to kill me, my growing suspicions of ‘Golick’ and friendship with Vol. The betrayal, collapse, and escape. Figuring out Briareth’s identity, and the train of logic that led up to that. I tell them of ranting on Briareth because of his stupidity, and I receive peals of laughter; I tell them of the fajita incident, and receive laughs and some sympathetic groans; I tell them of Myrddin getting out of the mountain before us, and the crowd erupts with howls of mirth at the idea that Myrddin is smarter than both of us. At this point Myrddin just walks over to our table and starts eating out of Briareth’s salad bowl, he introduces her to the crowd, and she receives a standing ovation. She bows her head in the audience's direction and then calmly walks over to a harassed stablehand who’s calling for her, looking at him as if to say, ‘what are you shouting for, I’ve been here all along.’

I continue on with my tale till the point where we meet Nerilamin, only holding back my darkest thoughts, and the Elves are entranced. I enjoy weaving my story. I love hearing their gasps of shock, their peals of laughter, it reminds me of the commeradmenship that I had been a part of in my training. Afterwards I feel strangely drained, and exit the tabletop stage to a standing ovation.

Briareth claps me on the back laughing so hard that tears are coming out of his eyes. “You should have been a bard instead of a prince!” he screams in my ear. I grin, exhausted, but exuberated. I’m ready for bed.

We leave early the next morning. The elves don’t just give us boats, Briareth’s ploy last night worked. They escort us to the river and add a couple guards to row the boat for us. They even have a special sturdy boat for Myrddin.

After the first couple hours, Briareth seems bored, and keeps tapping his fingers against the prow of the boat. I wait. He’ll tell us what he wants eventually.

Near lunchtime Briareth breaks his silence. “Nerialmin?”

“Hmm?” Nerilamin, who is steering the boat, twitches the rudder to the left a bit, sending us right.

“Could I steer? Pleeease?”

“Do you think I’m mad Briareth?! Of course you can’t steer! Especially after that alpaca incident!”

“Alpaca incident? What happened?” I ask curiously.

“Don’t tell him Nerialmin!” Briareth says. I raise an eyebrow, now even more intrigued.

“Well, long story short. He set off a stampede and an avalanche in one go. He isn’t getting the rudder ever again.”

“But I’ve learned. I won’t go left instead of right Nerilamin, please? I’ll owe you when we get back.” Briareth begs.

“Uh-huh,” Nerilamin is obviously skeptical. “You may have learned left from right, but you need to learn a lot more if I’m letting you steer the army’s crafts.”

“Test me!” Briareth says confidently.

“Fine. Five army ship questions. One, what does starboard and port mean? Two, how do you know if one of your crew has spotted an enemy? Three, who dictates where to go? Four, what do you do when there is a blockage of the river ahead? Five, how do you fight the current? Get them all right, and you can steer for five minutes.”

“Um, starboard and port, that’s right and left. Crew will signal if they see an enemy using code. The map tells us where to go, and before that the captain. If you see a blockage, travel overland, or if that isn’t available, search for an alternate route. I don’t fight the current, that's the rowers job.”

“Wow.” Nerilamin looks shocked. “None of them are textbook, but they are all kinda right policy wise. I didn’t think you could do that Briareth. Congrats, you get to drive. No more than five minutes though.”

“And no less either.” Briareth takes the tiller with a cheeky grin, and Nerilamin moves carefully to the prow. As he sits down Briareth calls back to him. “Want to know something interesting, Nerilamin?”

“What?” Nerialmin calls back. The boat jerks unexpectedly, I grip the side tightly, feeling a sense of dread.

“I guessed on all the questions except the left/right one!” Briareth cackles and then shouts “STARBOARD!” turning the tiller hard left, sending us skipping right, spewing up a spray that hits me full in the face. I groan softly, and see Nerilamin’s face pale as we suddenly feel the world drop out from under us. Briareth just sent us over a mini waterfall. He whoops in delight, shouting at the rowers to ready their paddles to fend off rocks.

After Briareth’s five minutes are up, Nerilamin scrambles for the tiller before he can do anything else chaotic. A sharp contrast to how careful he was moving about the boat earlier. Many of the rowers lost their breakfast on the way here, but we all survived.

“Just five more minutes?” Briareth pleads as Nerilamin pries him away from the controls.

“No! You’ve done enough damage already!” Nerilamin pants. “Break time everybody! We’ll let our bodies recover from that shock as we eat lunch.” The rowers cheer at this announcement, probably more for the break in Briareth’s driving than from the lunch if they’re feeling as nauseous as I am.

We are eating lunch– well, I’m attempting to eat lunch while everyone else eats. Apparently I was the only one who got sea-sick –when one of the Elves coming back from a bathroom break hurries up to Nerilamin and whispers something in his ear. I pause, in the middle of lifting my fork to my mouth, and watch curiously as Nerilamin’s face turns grim. He says something in a low voice to the Elf, the Elf nods, and Nerilamin dismisses him. Then he turns, meeting my stare. I glance back down at my food, and let my fork finish it’s journey. I hear Nerilamin come over to us. I’m sitting with a group, Briareth is telling the other Elves about his mission, which apparently was to destroy the mine, and he greets Nerilamin warmly when he interrupts them.

“Hey Nerilamin!” Briareth chirrups, “I was just telling the others about my mission, want to hear? I can summarize what you missed.”

“Unfortunately not, Briareth, as Prince Faladel already noticed, we have run into a spot of bother.”

“Whatever is the matter?”

“One of the volunteers spotted a Dwarven patrol’s tracks nearby. We need to split the party. Some of us are going ahead to follow the Dwarves, others are going back to warn base camp. Unfortunately, you two are too valuable to go ahead with the scouting party. You can go back to base camp, but that will delay your arrival in the capital for who knows how long, and we can’t even guarantee that you would arrive back safe. The Dwarves might double back to confuse the trail, meet up with your group's tracks, and start hunting you. You could go out on your own, which would probably be the best for stealth, but that means you’ll have to walk all the way back to Heronmal.”

“We’ll go back by ourselves, it’s fine.” Briareth says, then seems to remember that I get an opinion. “Right Faladel?”

“Not sure. Do you have a route in mind, Briareth?”

“Yep! I know a way where no Dwarf will find us.”

“Briareth, why are we still in this swamp?” I ask dryly 18ish hours later.

“Well they’ll never find us here. That’s what I told you.” Briareth replies, pushing a branch out of his face.

“We’ll be lucky if we can find ourselves in here. Why do you always insist upon getting us lost? First under the mountains, and now in a swamp!”

“Well, the mountains turned out alright, and this will too! Just you wait, I’ll find us a way out, we just need to wait a while until the Dwarves are gone.” I notice he doesn’t argue with the lost part and frown.

“And how will we know that they are gone? Let’s hear your brilliant plan Briareth.”

“Well,” Briareth shifts his weight on Myrddin nervously. Myrddin snorts in annoyance. “I was thinking we could use our intuition.”

“You mean guess.” I summarize.

“No, intuition isn’t guessing!” I raise an eyebrow at him, and he sighs, “I can see that I’m not going to convince you. Well do you have a better idea, smart-aleck? I thought not.”

“I had one, don’t follow your forgetful friend into a swamp.”

“Ha Ha, very funny. I saved our lives. We’ll be safe here. I feel it.”

“Yeah, safe to starve away in peace. You and your intuition Briareth.”

“My intuition saved our lives!” He protests.

“And doomed us at the same time. Have we seen this tree before?”

Briareth falls silent and glances at the dead tree that I am gesturing at. Then he sighs, “Yes, we have passed it three times already.”

“Your intuition giving you any directions?” I ask smugly.

“No.”

“I thought n-” my sentence gets cut off abruptly as I slam into something hard face first, a sharp jolt of pain runs through me. I feel a trickle of something hot run down from my nose. Briareth bursts into laughter, Myrddin snickers.

“Oh my gosh that was hilarious!” Briareth gasps out.

“What in the world?” I say, trying to find what I bumped into. There is nothing in sight. I wipe my nose. And see a couple drops of blood on the back of my hand. “What in the world?” I repeat. Briareth doubles over with laughter.

“You should have seen your face! It just went squish!”

“Briareth, did you see what I bumped into?”

“No, what was it?” Briareth gasps out.

“Nothing, it's absolutely nothing.” I reach out, and try and find it again, and then I spot a couple bright red dots, just hanging in the air.

“It’s right… here!” I say triumphantly, and grab the offending, invisible, something. “Now,” I mutter to it. “What are you?”

“Faladel?” Briareth’s voice has lost all of it’s amusement, and actually quavers a bit.

“What is it Briare-” I start to say, annoyed. Then I stop. Staring at three floating cloaked figures, who hadn’t been there thirty seconds ago.

As I watch them another appears, wind rushing around him in a wave as he materializes.

“Code Fuchsia! Unknown intruders broke through the deception shield!” The new arrival calls through a megaphone as the swamp seemingly melts away. I let go of what I now see is a tree branch and spin around to take in our new surroundings. The swamp that we had been stranded in, is gone. The smell, the vines on the trees around us, all gone. Only the slime on our clothes remains. In front of us, I see a massive stone building, surrounded by a small river that borders a forest that we are currently inside.

“Faladel,” Briareth tugs at my sleeve, “We’re surrounded.” I look up, and see that more of the cloaked and hooded figures have arrived. The one with the megaphone screams at us.

“Intruders! Dismount your weapons, drop your mounts, and surrender!”