If I thought last night was the sorest and most worn-out I could ever feel after a fight, even a mock one, I’ve been thoroughly re-educated in that regard tonight. Last night Kesla was just testing me, getting an idea of what she had to work with. Tonight she had no such illusions. I know what she’s doing, of course – I have the principles down, she recognises that, but I don’t know them yet. Not really. What I have is an understanding of the rote moves and responses and defences, and enough muscle memory that I can just about react if she throws something unexpected at me, but in terms of skill I’m still little better than a novice. She has to break me down, then build me up from the ground. Given that we don’t have a huge amount of time to work with, she can’t afford to take her time with me. So she can’t take it easy on me either. Which is why I feel like I’ve been beaten half to death.

Even so, I know for a fact that she’s actually holding back. A lot. It’s a particularly sobering thought, that she can work me over that efficiently, and it’s just a hint of what she can really do. I mean I’ve seen her fight for real, I know what she’s really capable of. It’s just very different being on the receiving end of a mere fraction of that …

I work my sore shoulders slowly, wincing a little as I have to raise my weak and fatigued arms to do so. Wow. I don’t know if I can keep this up if we’re to continue this over the next however many nights until we reach Bavat. Worse, if we are attacked again, and Kesla seems to think it extremely likely, am I even going to be in any fit state to defend myself with my new sword if it comes to it? I’m not filled with great confidence given how I feel right now.

Krakka’s been watching me for a while now, even though he should really be keeping an eye on our surroundings, much like I’m supposed to be. Driver 8 is sat on the far side of the camp, mostly facing out into the darkness deep within the trees, and from what I’ve been able to learn about his capabilities, he’s fully aware of everything that’s going on within a two-hundred square metre radius. We could all go to sleep and he could probably keep a keen eye out for the party on his own, but Kesla insists on these watches all the same. Just to play it safe. And she’s right to do so, of course.

Giving up trying to get comfortable, I pick the sword up again from my lap, shifting a little in my cross-legged seated position to try and find the optimal spot and failing miserably, and pick up the whetstone again. I look down the length of the blade the way I’ve seen Kesla do it, observing the various nicks her much more impressive sword did in our sparring match, and spit on the stone again to add some moisture. Then I get to work trying to smooth over the blade once again, working toward something like the wickedly keen edge Kesla’s always able to achieve.

My shoulder twinges hard and I wince again, almost dropping the stone as I try not to hunch over from the pain. Krakka lets out a deep sigh and stands up, moving over with quick, easy strides. “You’re causing me pain just watching you, kid.” He crouches behind me and places his hands on shoulders, then I feel the cool, soft pressure as he lays his forehead against the back of my skull.

I should tell him not to, that I’ve got to suffer through this trial, that Kesla’s making me stronger just as she’s trying to making me a better fighter, and I need the pain and discomfort. I should, but I don’t. I’m too passively miserable to argue. So I let him do what he does.

“Mother Luna, my glorious lady, praise your silvered light that reveals all and protects your faithful servants. Please bless this child that she may achieve the greatness I know she is capable of.”

That makes me blush again, and I almost start to protest after all, but I feel a tingling in the small of my back almost immediately, a warmth in his feathered hands that’s already spreading into me. Both sensations grow quickly, seeming to fill me up, and then everything just goes bright white and impossibly, wonderfully warm and I swear I’ve never felt anything like it. He’s healed my wounds before, I’ve felt that heat, but it’s usually more localised, concentrating on the actual injury as he forces it to knit and mend with astonishing speed. This is different, it’s all over me, through me, and I can feel something else out there besides his touch, something ephemeral but tangible all the same. Something powerful. Then he lets go and the feeling fades, but slowly. I still feel good after it’s gone. Far better than I have any right to.

He moves back to his spot by the fire, casually dropping onto his bedroll and picking up that huge hammer, gently cradling it in his arms like a loved one. He smiles back at me, calm but watchful, bright eyes glinting in the firelight.

“What was that?” I manage to gasp after a few moments, trying not to swoon in place.

“Serena’s blessing. Just a pick-me-up, if you will.”

“I saw … no, I felt something. It was like we weren’t alone. Like there was someone else watching over us while you did that.”

“There is.” Krakka nods, still smiling. “My Lady, Serena. She’s always watched over me. I asked her to help, so she did.”

Tentatively, I try working my shoulders. There’s no pain, no stress at all. None when I lift my arm, either. It’s incredible, but I’m not really that surprised by it. “Well thank her for me, please.” Then, feeling a complete idiot as I do it, I look up at the star-strewn blackness above us, no moon in sight right now but still a clear night’s sky, and say: “Thank you.”

His shoulders quake a little as he chuckles to himself, hugging the warhammer for a moment. “You don’t need to thank her, Gael. She’s happy to help when she can. I love you, so she loves you. She’ll help you whenever you need it.”

“Well thank you, anyway. You’re a good friend.”

He nods, still smiling. He keeps watching me as I pick up the sword and whetstone from my lap again, get back to work. I feel fantastic now, truth be told. Maybe I should ask him to do this again tomorrow night, after Kesla whales on me again. Or maybe not. Maybe that’s cheating, I’m glad he did it this time but I think perhaps I need the pain all the same, just to toughen me up. Except he wouldn’t let me. Krakka’s the reason I’m here in the first place, when you get right down to it.

Six months ago, I first made my way up to the Norther Reaches, two years after setting out into the real world as a working wizard, fresh from graduation at the Academy. I was finally starting to find my rhythm in the work, finally getting to know how it all worked outside the classrooms and laboratories and gymnasiums and dormitories. Performing magic for a genuine purpose, in order to help the people who’d acquired my services. Some for money, but only when they could spare it, otherwise I would help them without expecting reward. Sometimes they repaid me in kind with food, or a place to sleep, or supplies, but if they couldn’t I’d simply shrug it off, say that it’s all right, this is simply what I do. The Order don’t do this work for financial gain, we do it because we can, and the world benefits from it.

So when I arrived in a small village two days’ ride southwest of Hocknar, largely isolated from fast help from those in authority by mountains and hostile forests, I listened to what people had to put up with. Instead of the usual little problems like crop trouble or straying livestock or even trouble with brigands or bandits, there was something much more in my wheelhouse. Children were going missing in the night, no forced entry to their homes, baffling, worrying signs indicating something potentially supernatural was going on. So I presented myself to the town magistrate, offering my services in the matter. They were happy to have me, this had been going on for a few months and so far they hadn’t heard anything from Hocknar despite their increasingly desperate pleas for aid.

That night I started a patrol of the village, just strolling around, not even trying to be stealthy as I drifted with my intuition, something that had worked very well for me in the past. At three in the morning I was starting to think nothing was going to happen, or maybe I’d just missed my opportunity, then I saw a small halfling child, no more than six years old, climb out of their own bedroom window. They were blank-faced and empty-eyed, clearly in a trance as they navigated the climb down the drainpipe and then, after a clumsy landing on the cool ground, simply setting off running straight out of town. I followed without hesitation, already distinctly uncomfortable with this whole situation.

It was early summer, it was only a little brisk out, so I had no fear of the child freezing to death out here, if they even noticed the cold in the first place. They ran fast but I’m spry, even lugging all my gear, so I kept up well enough, only falling back a little when they entered the nearest stand of trees with no hesitation at all. They went deep, not heeding the sharp twigs or brambles, even as I started seeing blood shed from their tiny bare legs, trapped deep in their trance, and it fed my urgency as I started rushing to catch up again. Just as they burst into a clearing and I bumbled right into the open after them.

The child kept running but I froze, too late realising my error. They went straight to the source of this fell magic, a stooped, skeletal thin figure wrapped in thick, deeply shadowed tattered robes that stank like death even over the fifteen yard distance between us. I saw a face in the gloom of the hood, or at least the impression of one, an ancient, gaunt woman, looking as deathly as they smelt, and I started preparing a force blast even as they raised their bony, mummified hand towards me. Something undead, but powerfully magical. A minor lich, which wasn’t the surprise it should have been.

I readied the spell, desperate to hurl it before the child reached them, but this thing whispered something awful that had physical substance and suddenly I was being grabbed from all sides. Thin but horribly strong skeletal fingers, and the faces gathering around me were already rotten almost beyond recognition, more raw bone than features now. Half a dozen lesser wights swarming me, but I could see more skuttling out of the trees around us or slinking out of the undergrowth, impossibly fast given their condition. I fought and struggled but I was already overpowered, too late realising I’d run right into a trap.

Then I heard a voice I’ve come to know well cry out: “Mother Luna!!” Next thing I knew the air over our heads had burst in a flash of brilliant white that lit everything up stark, and the wights that were starting to dig their claws into me stumbled away, suddenly terrified as they tried to cover their heads with their arms. What flesh they had left was already starting to sizzle and scorch as the light blazed above them, and smoke poured from their eye-sockets as the pale eyes they had left began to burst. A high keening rang out and my ears almost burst, and I realised it was the wights themselves, wracked with terrible, inescapable pain as they were slowly incinerated by the radiant light of Mother Luna herself.

The lich was staggering back too, but they weren’t burning like their enslaved minions, blinded but otherwise still unharmed. The halfling child was free of the trance though, and they were curled in a ball five yards short of the mark, quivering as they screamed and wailed in terror at this whole mess. Then I finally saw the new figure standing nearby, warhammer raised high and glowing as bright as the light overhead, and that was when I first laid eyes on this particular cleric of Serena.

I heard crackling from the trees to my left and then the whoosh as three long black arrows swept past me so close I felt the wind, each catching the lich high in the chest, and it reared back howling louder than the wights ever did. Silvered broadheads. Many fell, unnatural things are vulnerable to silver, especially the undead, and as I watched flames began to burst from the wounds. The lich howled again as a tall, gangling figure rushed past me, already nocking another arrow, and it swept an arm at the newcomer, the air seeming to ripple like a heat-haze. Yeslee was hurled back, bow and arrow scattered, and I felt the buffeting of a strange wind as I was almost knocked down by the excess of the spell. But I held my ground, snatching up my staff, the crystal still in my hand so I screwed it in place at the top, and I readied a blast, focusing through the wood in my hands.

Just as another figure bolted out of the trees behind the lich, bastard sword already raising in both hands, readying the strike. I held back the spell then, feeling the charge surging through me and thrumming through the staff but waiting as I watched Kesla rush for the lich’s back, and it hadn’t noticed her coming yet.

Without so much as a grunt of effort, Kesla swung and the sword cut through the rotted cloth and stick-thin neck as if it wasn’t even there. A terrible spasm shot through the body as the severed skull arced through the air, and the head was screaming again, choked but still potent as it fell, and for a long time the body remained upright, still clawing at the air as though the blow hadn’t done anything. Then it began to buckle, and as it crumbled a wisp of something, not quite smoke, nor breath, curled out of the gaping skull mouth before turning into a dull grey streak that shot away through the trees.

Art and Driver 8 emerged from their appointed positions just beyond the trees then, almost like an afterthought, but they seemed no more threat to me then than the three who’d already joined me in the fight, so I let the spell peter out. Suddenly I was very tired, and I had to lean on my staff to keep from collapsing right there.

The wights were already crumbling to dust around us, and the remains of the lich’s body were following fast, but I knew it was far from truly dead. Until someone finds its heart and burns it to ash, it will grow itself a new body over time, but they’re unlikely to see it return to these climes, not for a while at least. But for now at least, the threat was gone.

It took a little coaxing, but Art was able to calm the child, just like he always can. He’s too cuddly, kids just love him. Back in the village, the Creeping Bam woke the magistrate and a gathering of the villagers was immediately called, the child reunited with their extremely grateful parents. I followed in the slipstream, feeling about as sheepish as I ever had in my life before, certain I hadn’t been any help at all.

So when the magistrate presented them with a reward of two hundred gold coins for their efforts and they immediately gave me an even share of it, I was entirely baffled, ineffectually babbling that I had done absolutely nothing to deserve it. They’d saved my life as surely as the child’s, while I’d just blundered into a situation I didn’t fully understand and nearly got myself torn apart for my troubles. Kesla just blinked back at me, looking entirely incredulous just like she does, and replied: “You earned this, just like the rest of us. You went into that clearing with every intention of helping. Take the money, cuz you deserve it.”

There was no arguing with her, of course, so I just took the pouch of coins and joined them for a very big early breakfast at the local tavern. We got to talking and before I knew it I was telling them what I’d set out to do in the world, and how, for the most part, I’d been pretty successful. Then I did something wildly impulsive, although at the time I felt like I had no other choice – I said that they’d saved my life, I owed them now, and so I wanted to go with them, to help in their future endeavours. At least until I’d paid them back for the great service they’d done me.

Kesla just watched me for a while, and the others just waited, watching her, already deferring to her judgement. It was clear to me in that moment that, while they were all considered equal partners in the group, they would always consider Kesla to be their de facto leader. Suddenly I very much wanted her to like me.

Then she reached out her hand, and shook mine when I took it, firm and forceful just as I expected. “Welcome to the Creeping Bam.” And just like that, I was one of them.

We never did find out what happened to the rest of the children, there was no trail at all aside from the remains of the wights and their creator. It wasn’t much of a stretch to imagine the most likely truth, they had been murdered by the lich, used to fuel its powers and its extend its “life”. That was a particularly harsh lesson for all of us, just how bleakly cruel the world can really be no matter who you are.

After that, I worked my backside off every single time we went up against something. That one little mistake haunted me for the longest time, the feeling I screwed up so bad and nearly got snuffed out by my own foolishness. So every fight we went into, I fought as hard as possible, using every spell I could think of in the best, cleverest ways I could to give the party every possible edge in order to win. Soon enough I started to feel like I was pulling my weight, and the others clearly appreciated my efforts.

More importantly though, I was falling in love with them all, and I could tell they were starting to feel the same about me. It started feeling like I’d found myself a family.

It hasn’t been perfect, by any means. We’re all from different worlds, especially Yeslee and Driver 8 – she fled from the militaristic oppression of her native Tektehr in the far north, only for it to catch up with her again when the Occupation of Rundao came, while he was created and then lost long before the world was upended and hastily remade in the Sundering – but even so, compared to the others my past is very different. It’s not just my education, it’s my sheltered upbringing – they’ve been out in the real world far longer that I have, they know how it works, and I’m still catching up with them through clumsy trial-and-error. Intelligent as I am, there are times I feel unbearably naïve, occasionally losing my footing in everyday encounters the others don’t even have to think about because they’ve been through it a thousand times. It can get embarrassing being a novice at life itself.

My relative lack of ability in real combat, however, has become the biggest problem, especially after a string of tough encounters where my own magic came up short and I got hurt by my own inexperience. The worst was running into a nullified field created by the shaman of a goblin raiding party a month ago, where I found my own spells rendered useless and my quarterstaff skills came up short. I took a jagged knife in the side during that encounter, and my leather armour wasn’t enough to protect me. Krakka was able to heal me on the spot after dispatching my attacker, but it was the most sobering of a these incidents which served as a wakeup call for everyone. I’m not just underqualified for this work, I’m a potential liability for the group. So Kesla gave her ultimatum, and now she’s enforcing it.

Once I’m satisfied with the condition of my blade, I take the little bottle of oil out of the special satchel Kesla gave me and uncap it, upending a little dab into the rag so I can start polishing. It’s interesting, there’s something so wonderfully calming about this work, it centres me so completely. In a way I think it teaches me something quite profound about Kesla herself, about the way she is, how she can be so calm all the time. There’s such control and discipline involved in such simplistic work with such dangerous weapons, that she’s come to use it in almost every aspect of her life, almost without even thinking about it. It reminds me so much of what I had to learn for myself back in the Academy, learning how to master and perfect the art of magic itself, and it’s sobering to realise just how similar our upbringings actually were at their core.

After a while it becomes clear Krakka’s still watching me, that subtle smile never leaving his face. I ignore it as much as I can while finishing the job at hand, but once I’m satisfied that the sword’s as sharp and clean as I can get it and it’s sheathed and set aside with the rest of my gear, there’s nothing else I can find to distract myself. My spellbooks are right there in their satchels, a subtle siren call to me even though I’ve reread them many times, enough to know most of the spells well enough I could probably completely recreate one from memory if it was lost. I can’t read them again, not right now. I’m supposed to be on watch. Usually when I start reading everything else just goes away. It’s too dangerous.

So I just sit here, looking into the darkness beyond the trees and listening to the babbling of the stream alongside the track, which cuts off much less of the forest’s night-sounds than I would have expected, all the while trying to ignore that gently watchful gaze. Finally I can’t take it anymore, so I turn to look at him, sitting there like some impossibly satisfied perched carrion bird, and sigh. “All right, I’ll bite. What is it?”

Krakka blinks for a few moments and cocks his head. Looking me over. Evaluating now. This is worse, I think. “Why did you choose to do this, Gael?”

“What, become a wizard? I don’t understand what you mean. I really couldn’t have been anything else.”

“No, not becoming a wizard. I know how it works, you had the magic in you already, you told me your father left you in the care of the Silver Order so they could teach you to properly harness it. You grew up with magic all around you. I don’t think you could’ve become anything else either.”

“So what are you asking me? Why did I choose what?”

He looks off into the darkness himself now, thoughtful for several moments, and I think he’s finding the words. He’s got an idea in his head but he can’t quite figure out how to phrase it. “You had a hard time growing up, I understand. When you were in the Academy, you didn’t have a lot of real friends, did you?”

It takes me a little while to answer that one. We’ve never really talked that much about exactly what it was like for me during my adolescence, but I’m sure he’s been able to glean enough from what I have said to form a fairly accurate picture. Kesla too, no doubt. “I was a half-elf who’d lived my entire life under the protection of the Order. My father … he wasn’t around very much. He had his work, he was always away. I knew he loved me, whenever he returned to Bavat he always spent every waking moment he could with me. We’d talk for hours, and he taught me as much as my tutors. But he was actually interested in me, not just in how I was developing but who I was. And what I was … he accepted who I chose to be.” I take a deep breath. “He was all I had, for a long time.”

“You wanted to make him proud of you, then.”

“Very much so, yes. But there was more to it than that. Being what I was, and who I was … I was an outcast in that place, even though none of my tutors ever made me feel that way. Well, almost none of them. The other students … not so much. If my mother had been an elf too, I think they would have accepted me in a heartbeat. Even the human children, I think. I’ve never really been able to understand what they have against people like me, but …” I let another sigh go, starting to knead my hands together a little. “I think the fact that I showed a lot of them up so much was part of it, too. I was the top student in many of my classes by quite a margin. There was definitely some resentment of that.”

“Sounds like you were very much like your father in that.”

I nod in agreement to that. There aren’t many people in Rundao, at least among those who know much about the larger world beyond their own valley or community, who don’t know the name Darion Foxtail. One of the greatest wizards alive today, a true force to be reckoned with. Advisor to royalty and policy-makers before the Occupation, and those who hold power now still listen to him if they have any sense. Well known as a protector of the common man too, a defender of the defenceless. That’s the legend, anyway, but while heroes can often be a disappointment in person, I know my father deserves the praise he receives.

“Yes, I suppose I am. But it could be intimidating to others when I was growing up. I had to develop a thick skin.” I stop kneading, remembering what Wenrich used to say about it. Don’t let them see they’re getting to you. “They’d use any opportunity they could to take me down a peg. So the subject of my race was of great interest to them.”

Krakka frowns at that, and I can tell what he’s thinking now. Being tengu, he understands what it means being a relative social outcast.

“I did have friends, though. Good ones. There was a whole bunch of us, a proper little group of misfits. They took me under their wing, backed me up when they could, and I tried to pay them back in kind whenever I could.” I can’t help smiling when I think about them. “Tulen. Jathran and Sessa. Little Jommelin. Lorth …” I blush a little thinking about him, but I keep smiling because my memories of all of them are so good.

“Where are they now?”

“All over the place. Tulen and Jathran, they stayed in Bavat after graduation. Tulen took a job in the Citadel, helping with the study of the artifacts locked away in the Vaults. Jathran became a post-graduate, pursuing his doctorate. The last time I got a communication from him they’d awarded him full honours, and now he’s a professor teaching transmutation at the Academy.”

“And the others?”

“Sessa took a junior advisory position for the city council in Untermer. She’s doing well, I’m told. Jommelin and Lorth … they went into public service like me. They’re on the road, moving from community to community, wherever they’re needed. I haven’t heard anything from either of them since I left Bavat.” I sigh, feeling a little sad now. I miss them both, and I often wonder whether they’re okay, or if, perhaps, one or both of them might have succumbed to mistakes like the one that nearly claimed me. It’s tragically easy in our professional, I’ve learned.

“I’m sure they’re both fine.” Krakka looks down at the hammer in his hands, turns it around a few times, looking down at his own reflection in the gleaming silvered head. “So you all graduated, and then …?”

I think about it for a while, catching back up to where we were in the conversation. “Of course. I was top of my class. That didn’t exactly make me any more popular with most of the other graduates, I can tell you. But my friends were proud of me. And my father …” I smile at the memory of the graduation ceremony. “I don’t know how he managed it, I knew how busy he was, really didn’t get my hopes up that he would make it, but somehow he was there. He was so proud. He said this was where my life could really finally start, everything I’d been through, that I’d had to put up with, I didn’t have to worry about that anymore. From now on, I could make what I wanted of whatever piece of the world I decided to inhabit. He saw great things in my future, that if I worked hard enough, I could become far greater than he ever even tried to be.”

“That was quite a vote of confidence.” Krakka’s eyes are wide, his face seeming almost solemn now. “You went into this work because it’s what he does, didn’t you?”

Frowning, I watch him for several moments. “Maybe. I don’t know. When they asked me what I wanted to do … I really didn’t think about it too much. I’ll admit, this role had its attractions to me already, far beyond what I already knew through his stories. I didn’t like the idea of getting some administrative job in Bavat, serving the Order from behind a desk or in a laboratory somewhere in the Citadel, and I was done with formal education. I have no interest in becoming a professor and teaching the next generation to control their magic.” I begin to weave my fingers through the air, not focusing on any specific sigils, just tracing lines. They leave that luminous blue trace behind them, flickering briefly and fading quickly. “To be honest, I think even before I started my formal education I already knew I had to do this. Yes, I was emulating my father, but I think I did that as much because he represented what I wanted for myself. In truth, I probably would have come out here on my own even if he’d been one of my professors at the Academy.”

“You enjoy this kind of life, then? The danger, the unknown?” He’s still unreadable as he watches me.

“I don’t know if I’d say it like that, but … it’s fulfilling. I’m helpful. I feel useful out here. Back in the Academy, whenever I mastered a spell, I’d ask myself what could I actually do with this particular magic, what kind of use could I put it to. All right, maybe I should have been thinking that was about the combat training too, but I guess I didn’t realise back then how important that could really be. I think perhaps I really did become too overly reliant on magic for fighting. But I never thought about doing anything else. Now that I’m doing it …” I stop tracing and look down at the sword again. At the hard new lessons it represents that I’m still learning. “All right, it’s not what I thought it would be. I’ll admit that. But no, I don’t regret my decision. This is what I was always meant for. I’m sure of that now.”

Krakka thinks long and hard, then looks around at the others, and his feathers puff out from his collar and around his head as if he’s drawing into himself a little. Then that kind-of-smile returns to his face, and he nods. “Sure.” He sets the hammer upside-down on its head, handle sticking up beside him, and gets to his feet, clearly in no hurry as he does it. Then he picks the hammer up again, hefts it to rest over his shoulder like always. Then he steps up and offers his hand. “So. That portal spell you’ve been talking about, the one that bandit wizard pulled on us the other day. You still plan on mastering that one, right?”

Blinking for a moment, I look up at him, then at the offered hand. “Um … yeah. Yes, I do. If I can. It’s been giving me trouble.”

“Well I’m sure Big Man could probably pull off this watch bollocks all on his own, but I might as well pull my own weight after I said I would. I’m fine covering for you if you wanna have another go before you turn in.”

“You’re sure?”

He nods, and I respond in kind. Digging in the appropriate satchel, I retrieve the right spellbook and take his hand. His grip is strong, and while I can get up myself easily enough I allow him to help me up all the same, once again marvelling at just how surprisingly strong he really is given how diminutive he is. He gives my hand a last squeeze of reassurance once I’m stood, then heads over to the opposite side of the camp from where Driver 8 remains, motionless as ever.

Moving a little way from my sleeping friends, just to play it safe, I flip through the book until I find the appropriate page. Right, you bugger. Judgement day. Or night. Whatever. Taking a deep breath, I start reading.