The halfling came with his own lantern. A bronze thing, worn on the belt, about the right size for the average human toddler. Eris watched its slapping against Zydnus’ thigh and listened to its rattle for the first two miles of their three-day trip. All she could do was wonder in contempt why such a miserable, microscopic creature had been invited on this expedition. She wondered what he could possibly have to offer that any street urchin would not.

“What is it you do, anyway?” he said. He glanced at her over his shoulder. His voice was like the squeaking chorus of a thousand mice.

“Don’t mind her, she’s the torchbearer,” Rook said.

“I knew it! I hope we’re not giving her a full share! There’s a lot of money in this bounty you know, a whole lot, and fame too, and I don’t want to cut in some torchbearer who can’t even fight! She better at least know how to haul a sack full of gold around, or I swear—”

“If you swear any more, halfling, you may never swear again,” Eris said.

They stopped for a brief rest. Zyd wiped the sweat off his forehead. He turned with a quirked brow, confused at her words. He found her glare.

“She’s a mage, Zyd,” Rook interjected.

“Oh. So where’s your magic staff, huh?”

“This is your fault,” she said to Rook.

“She doesn’t need a staff,” Rook said.

“Really?” Zyd said.

“Would you like a demonstration?” Eris said.

“As a matter of fact I would! I bet she’s not even a real magician—”

Rook stepped between them. “She is, Zyd. I’ve seen it.”

“What spells?” Zyd said.

Rook put a hand on the halfling’s shoulder and led him back down the road. “Lightning bolts called out of the sky. Fireballs through corridors and goblins singed to bits. Very powerful.”

Zyd refused to be shepherded.

“I don’t believe it! No, no, no, no, no, no, no! Look how skinny she is! Look at those arms! I bet she’d fall over the first time she tried to cast a real spell!”

She was not one to balk at a challenge. Rook had been spared, but now they were alone, in the woods, and now she could teach a lesson. Now she could make it known that Eris was not a name for any yet living to mock lest they envied the dead.

Her eyes, once brown, now gold, flashed green; she took one step forward, and—

Rook blocked her path.

“Move,” she said.

“Calm down,” he said.

“Get out of my way.”

“What? What are you gonna do?” Zyd said.

“Eris,” Rook hissed. His fingers closed around her arm. She struggled to pull herself away, but he was much stronger than her. Zyd was right: Eris was weak. The last month’s accommodations led to vastly improved vigor over when she first fled Erimos, but she was still malnourished and of poor physique. She was no athlete. “You can fight later.”

“But it is so beautiful today. Why not now?” Eris said

“Yeah? Why not now?” Zyd said.

Rook sighed. He turned back to the halfling and picked him up by the chain of his cloak.

“Because,” he said, and he was getting irritated, “after you’ve been smeared across the grass here, it’ll be a two person job to piece you back together: one to pick up the chunks, another to keep the crows away. And I don’t think Eris will be especially interested in playing scarecrow.” He gave Zyd a shove down the road. “Now play nice.”

Eris’ attention was split. The air around her tingled. Even if she left no permanent damage, or serious scars, a demonstration was in order. But Rook gave her one final piercing glance, and she sighed.

The spell dropped. The journey continued.

At the end of the first day they made camp in a grove by a small river. The three of them together had common sense enough to limit their conversations to only strict necessities. They placed their bedrolls distantly.

Once darkness fell Eris walked to the river. She was grateful for the respite from company. In all her brief life the rule held true that she felt satisfied in the presence of no personality save her own. That quality served her well so far.

She took off her sandals and held her feet in the current. The water was warm. They were approaching the hills of Rytus now; to the east was Thermopos Mountain, where, eons ago, a volcano erupted and a snowstorm precipitated atop towering peaks. The blizzard never stopped, and the volcano never fell dormant—Thermopos was a match that never burned out. The resulting runoff of melted snow brought life to all the peninsula, and made rivers like this one hot and pleasant to the touch even miles downstream.

Eris possessed many vices, too many to count, and cleanliness was nearly chief among them. So she slipped off her dirty traveler’s attire and slipped herself into the water. In an instant warmth washed away all the day’s grime. Her tired muscles gasped in relief. Once clean she lingered by the shore, and as she dressed herself for bed she heard the barking of a dog. The voice of Rook followed:

“Eris, are you there? Zyd—"

She turned to face him but made no effort to cover herself. His reaction was telling; it was the reaction she wanted, and the reaction she expected. His eyes widened as his lips fell silent.

“Did you need something?” she said.

“Zyd cooked us dinner.”

“I do not want anything cooked by Zyd.”

“Cooked carrots with salted bacon? I’ve had some already, he used his own supplies. It’s very good.”

That did sound very good. Eris’ pride was pitched in a brief battle against her stomach, but, in the end, one side’s forces were vastly superior to the other.

“Then it is all the more for you,” she said.

“Okay,” Rook sighed. He looked her over for a few seconds longer than he needed to, then returned back to camp.

Eris knew she was beautiful. She was sculpted after the fashion of Old Kingdom statuary. Her appearance had drawn a great deal of attention over recent years, since she became old enough to notice it, and so long as it occurred in the designated areas, she welcomed it. As far as she was concerned, attraction was another form of magic. An invisible force which could be used to control men and women alike. To know that a creature as fearsome—and appealing—as Rook was not immune to this more mundane variety of spells…well, that was reassuring, was not it? Might he be dancing to her tune without so much as a single breath of mana drawn from the air?

These thoughts left her feeling particularly self-satisfied as she retired for the night—even as she ate stale bread for dinner.

“My dad was a fletcher!” Zyd said. “I can shoot a horseshoe out of the air at—at one hundred yards! Yeah!”

“All my horseshoes are back at Vandens,” Rook said. "Eris?"

"I want nothing to do with this," she said.

“How about—here, that stick.” Zyd picked up a stick. “Here, throw it for me.” Zyd, who was, apparently, an archer, withdrew his hunting bow from its quiver. “Throw it!”

Rook shrugged and tossed the stick. Zyd nocked an arrow, drew back on the string, let slip his fingers—

By the time the arrow’s fletching had left the bowstring, the stick was already on the ground. A few seconds later there came a distant clattering of the head breaking against a rock.

“Truly astonishing,” Eris said.

“Here, try again,” Rook said.

The scene repeated once, then twice. No luck. The halfling never came within a mile of hitting his target.

“They’re too light! That’s it! You’re throwing them too high! Here, try a rock!”

“Throw the rock at me instead and spare me this scene,” Eris said.

“Hey, I’d like to see you do this! It isn’t easy, sister!” Zyd said.

“I will not do it, because I cannot do it, which is why I did not volunteer to do it, you absolute—no, will not stoop to this level again. Leave me be.”

She proceeded onward. It was an extra day to travel by road to Kaimas along the shoreline, then from Kaimas to the mine, so they took a shortcut directly north, through the woods. The going was much harder without a path underfoot. She was happy to be more than six inches tall as they trudged through briar and detritus.

That night Zyd did not cook her dinner. There was no river to bathe in.

She did, however, leave her things at her chosen site and visit Rook.

With appropriate flair she sat down across from him at the fire, where he rested idly, a small book in his hands. Pyraz was against his legs. He looked up at her with confusion.

“I have a question for you,” she said.

He smiled. “This isn’t a trick, is it?”

“’Is this a trick’ is itself a question, one that I did not come to answer.”

“We can go right to flirting if you prefer.”

“You would like that, would you not?”

“Was that your question?”

“It is ‘a’ question, but not ‘the.’”

“An indefinite question, that.”

“In fact my question is quite definite.” Here she paused. “Your name is Rook, yes?” Another smile. He leaned down into his bedroll and pulled Pyraz to his side, who rolled onto his belly. He almost answered, when she continued, “You needn’t respond, ‘tis rhetorical; I ask because this is, then, the name your mother gave you?”

“I am possessed of no certainties, for the compulsion to inquire in this regard never overcame me,” he replied, with a diction that did not match his common speech. He was mocking her. She caught on instantly. Eris was, in her way, attempting to be friendly, and she didn’t like being rebuked. He added, “Yet so I have always been led to believe.”

“Yet you are blond.”

“Am I?” His eyes rolled upward, as if trying to get a look at his own hair.

“Indeed. Does it not strike you as, at least, peculiar, that a man with blond hair and blue eyes has been named after an animal—the crow—which is black? I cannot mark this.”

“That’s what this is about?”

“I am merely curious.”

He shot upright so quickly that Pyraz was sent scurrying away from the fire in fright, before limping back. He approached Eris with a wagging tale but was shooed away.

“If you must know,” he whispered, conspiracy on his voice, his eyes staring into hers, and he acted out every syllable with his whole body, “when I was young I looked just like you’d think. Brown eyes and black hair. But on my eighth birthday I was kidnapped by a Magister. He sent an orcish mercenary to apprehend me and drag me screaming from my father’s estate. For twelve days and eleven nights they kept me hostage, before finally we came to a tower, much like the Spire we found, and tossed me in a dungeon. I don’t know how long I wasted away in there—oh, it was a nightmare! I was starved, beaten, forced to share a cell with a troll, but on the fifteenth day I saw an opening, when the troll was let out to speak with an ambassador, and I ran—but the Magister was too fast. He cast a spell and nets fell out of the sky and pinned me to the ground! He said,

‘Now I shall grant unto you a punishment that may never be undone,’

His eyes flashed red, and I was overcome with a flash of smoke. The air around me burned—there was so much pain, I couldn’t—but when I woke up, my eyes had changed…my hair was…fair…”

He collapsed back down.

“My life hasn’t been the same since. That's why I'm here. My family disowned me. Everything lost.”

Eris was only half listening. She was more taken by the way he animated himself, by the looks he gave and the way his muscles flexed beneath his shirt. She hadn’t been entirely certain why her curiosity on this point, on such a minor issue as a boy’s name, had possessed her to come speak with him; now she had a clearer idea. It was something of a pretext.

She frowned once he finished.

“I see,” she said. “Truly?”

“No. It’s my family’s name; our symbol is a crow. Every son is Rook. That’s all.”

“Ah. You are an aristocrat, then."

“In the sense that Zydnus is an archer.” She smiled. “I hope that answers your question. I need to get some sleep; we should reach the mines tomorrow.”

“Yes, I should…goodnight,” Eris said, standing. The words were awkward and inelegant. She found herself inclined to stay, for a reason she couldn’t express, but left anyway. Then, as ever, she slept in her bedroll alone under the canopy, this time with very mixed thoughts on how she felt about the Blond Crow.