I’m abandoned. They plan to leave me behind and all I can do is watch their backs as they go, and I stay. I want to be with them, follow them to whatever battlefield they’re rushing towards, but Theo made it clear that he won’t let me.

“Oh, stop sulking. It isn’t that bad,” Alice says. “Now, what sound does this make?”

She points at a symbol on the paper.

“Ze.”

“… Are you paying any attention? You see this lack of focus is why you haven’t been qualified yet.” She shakes her head, reading through the sounds as she points out the symbols.

The past few days I’ve been studying as hard as I can and smashing clay golems to de-stress with what little free time I get. Alice, of course, hasn’t the time to teach me all day long, but with the threat of being left behind, I study on my own whenever I can.

Still, how am I supposed to remember all of this in a day?

How am I supposed to remember all these little shapes at all?

How does everyone else do it? There are so many different shapes, and they’re put together in so many ways! So, so many swirly symbols…

Adeleya and the rest are preparing to go out on another quest tomorrow, and they expect it to take a week if nothing goes wrong. As to the reason I can’t go with them, according to Alice I need to properly be a member of a Guild-certified mercenary company.

I should have been initiated as an apprentice to Adeleya’s party but Alice is holding me back, saying all sorts of silly things about tests and education.

“So, what is it that Syr still has to do to become a Falchion?” I ask her, interrupting her lesson.

“I’ve told you before, you must be patient before anything else.” She sighs, stepping closer to the table where I’m seated, “Why is it you’re so determined to be a merc anyway? It’s a violent life. If you stay here and focus on learning you can do some far safer work here. Wouldn’t that be better?”

Safer work? If I can’t fight, if I’m just protected like before, I’ll be too weak. I need to be strong to protect Adeleya, and everyone else I care about. I’ll protect Alice too if she lets me.

“You don’t have a problem with Adeleya and the others doing it,” I argue.

“I do have a problem with it, but I can’t stop them. I can stop you,” She sits up sharply, “Theo is far too old to be out there hunting monsters and bandits, he’s going to get himself killed. Adeleya would be perfectly well suited to any mage job around town, and Lothar… If he ever properly wants a girl to stay with him, then he needs to get himself a proper career. Something stable, where he won’t disappear for weeks on end.”

“Lothar wants a girl?” I ask.

“He isn’t making a secret of it,” she shrugs. “The poor boy can’t quite figure out how to settle down. In any case, I’d like you to try for a better life.”

“What makes it better?”

“A warm home to return to. Little, or at least less fear of dying and losing those around you. The life of a mercenary is not a kind one,” she insists.

“I want to be strong,” I insist. “I want to be a Falchion mercenary.”

Alice shudders, taking a long deep breath as she looks me over again.

“I’ve said all I have to say.” She puts away her papers. “Take the rest of the day how you wish, but please, think seriously about your options.”

It’s nice of her to think about it so much, but I can only see one future for me. Standing beside Adeleya and the others, fighting monsters, bandits, and anything else that’s dangerous.

Even if I try to find something else to do, the only real skills I have are fighting and surviving, these lessons just prove how unsuited I am to Alice’s work. I want to be out there fighting everything that could harm us. I want to be powerful and dangerous so that when everything goes bad, I can protect what matters to me.

The guild hall is busy with all sorts of people, but no one of much importance. No one from our group. I go outside to look for them; they haven’t left yet.

When they go, I’m going to be alone again. Alice is always busy with work, even if she spares what time she can to teach me, and I am getting familiar with some of the other guild mercs, but they aren’t the same.

Walking the cobblestone streets, passing only strangers, I try to keep the bubbling tears from reaching my eyes. I can’t cry, what would father think?

Blinking back the water in my eyes, I look up at the sky. There’s a bird up there, floating on the air and looking down at me. If I could see from above, then I’d never get lost, and I could always find Adeleya and Theo and Nadia wherever they are. Lothar too, but he’s mean.

I want to make more friends.

But if people learn about my necromancy…

“Syr?” Nadia comes out of a shop and calls out to me. She’s wearing the same dull clothes as ever, though they’re still slightly different from other elves, better suited to fighting. She carries a bow with her, and a quiver of arrows is attached to her belt.

“You’ve finished your lessons for the day?”

“Yep. What are you doing?” I ask.

“I’m giving my bow some love and attention. If I don’t practice, I’ll forget how to use her.” She runs her hand along her bow. “But, Syr, there were some other things that I wanted to talk with you about.

“Only if you have time right now,” she rushes to add, not quite looking at me.

“Syr…” I choke on my own name.

“I have time,” I say, it’s nice to spend time with Nadia as well.

“How are the lessons going?” She asks as we walk for the gates.

“My head hurts,” I tell her. “But I’ll be done and back with everyone soon.”

“Is that so?” She asks.

“It is. I can already fight, it’s just the letters and numbers that are difficult.” I tell her, ignoring all the other things that Alice is trying to teach me.

“Those letters and numbers are something that will prove important at times. Keep it up.”

“I will.” I’m smart enough to work it all out. I need to be.

Nadia, after a moment’s silence falls between us, starts explaining all the things that she’s had to prepare for their quest. It’s interesting to hear about their food, and how they have ‘emergency rations’ for when they can’t get anything fresh, but she’s talking so fast that I don’t really get everything she’s talking about.

Outside and away from Snowspring’s walls, just beyond the training grounds, lay the beginnings of a forest. It’s not the same forest that I was lost in, but it’s similar. The trees and ferns are of the same type, but here they’re cut down and ripped up.

Stumps cover an area of a few hundred paces near the edge of the forest, but they’re all old and rotting. This is where the archers train.

Straw targets are set on some of the stumps, and on others, there are circles painted on the wood itself. Holes mark out where others have hit, and some of the stumps are nearly completely worn down to nothing.

While there are no archers here, mages and summoners practice their magics in the training fields near the walls, facing off against the more physically oriented mercenaries.

Nadia draws her bow, holding it for only a moment before releasing it with a sharp snap and letting the arrow fly. It slams firmly into the target, sticking into a half-rotten stump.

“What did you call Syr here for?” I ask her.

She takes her time finding a reply, looking down at me with an expression I can’t read before turning back towards the target and the forest beyond.

“Have you met many more elves here?” She asks. “Apart from the elder?”

“Some.”

“Did they cause you problems?” Another of her arrows flies true, striking the target. “I know just how they can be sometimes, and if there’s anything that you want to talk about…”

“I’m fine.”

The other elves mostly give me distance, though that might have to do with my sword scaring them away. Or maybe my glaring at them. Or that time I growled at an old elvish woman who was pestering me…

“Would you like to know more about us elves? How we’re different from the other races?” She asks.

“We’re different? No one else has pointy ears, and Alice said that Elves are better at magic. I never really thought about it, people are people.”

“Ah, I suppose you wouldn’t know, would you?” Nadia shakes her head before turning towards me. “The largest two differences between us elves and the other races are our magic affinity and our longevity. The former you already know about.”

“Longevity…”

“We live longer, so long as you don’t fall to violence, you could live for five hundred years or so. Dwarves can last for two hundred years and humans might live instead for seventy, norkit for a little more than that.”

“Wait…” Adeleya is human.

She must be about twenty, which means she’ll be around for around fifty more years. But I’ll be around for another five hundred…

Nadia looks down at me with a lonely smile, “That is one of the reasons that elves tend to keep to themselves. The idea of outliving your companions… it is not an easy thing to live with. Harder still depending upon how close one gets.”

Adeleya dying will be painful but… all of my friends one day become ash. It’s not something strange.

“Silly. Even if friends leave, it’s better to know them before then.”

“I agree,” Nadia says, “but I’m sure you can at least understand why others don’t.”

I do get it.

It hurts when friends die.

It’s lonely.

It’s painful.

I understand being afraid of pain. But it’s still silly.

“I suppose that might be part of the reason we are taught to abstain from physical affections, but honestly, I’m not sure. That part always confused me.”

“Physical affection?” I ask her about the strange term.

“Hugs and kisses, and all that follows.” She says with a little smile, “You complained about the restriction when the old man bothered you about it, didn’t you?”

I nod slowly but lean my head to the side in thought.

“What is a kiss?”

“Ah yes… well I suppose it isn’t all that strange for you not to know,” she says, shifting around a little as she thinks. “A kiss is when you press your lips against someone, it is sort of like a hug, I suppose. Most other races kiss their children on the cheeks or forehead, at least that’s what I’ve noticed. Not on the lips though. To kiss on the lips is… well, that’s only for people especially close.” Her cheeks are strangely red as she loses confidence in her words.

Especially close? Adeleya’s soft lips spring to mind. I’ll have to ask her about kissing later.

“The biggest differences between us elves and the other races other than age and magic come from culture. It is elvish culture that holds us back from kissing and hugging, it’s the same reason we’re meant to cover ourselves to protect from the sunlight, and it’s why we refrain from animal products. Meats, furs, silks, milk, cheese, I could go on all day.”

“Why?” That’s the one part I never really got. Everyone eats someone else, that’s how the world works.

“I’ve asked the same,” She looks toward the distance, “It’s comforting to at least have someone else asking the same question.

“The answers I’ve received change, but few ever make sense to me. The most common I hear is that it is for the sake of the animal or monster’s wellbeing. Some sort of moral justice about cruelty to animals. Yet, if cruelty were truly the concern, then why overlook so many other cruelties of this world?” She glares into the distance as if trying to figure out some great puzzle.

“I think that there is more to it. We have special foods we’re encouraged to eat, and our clothes use a special type of cotton, all produced from specific plants. Plants that I’ve never found in nature and are only ever farmed in towns like Cildr where the æther flows more freely.” She lowers her eyes and shakes her head as she speaks the name of the town.

“I never get a clear answer from the elders when I ask why.”

I nod slowly.

Elves are strange.

“There’s something that I wanted to ask you but…” She shakes her head and speaks more firmly, “How did you survive?”

She wants to know why I’m so different. I don’t even think of myself as an elf.

“Syr ate anything she could. That’s how Syr survived,” I tell her, falling back into the old habit as I remember what it was like out there. “Reeds and berries are good, meat isn’t bad if it’s cooked, bugs are not nice, but Syr ate them anyway.”

Nadia looks over to the forest, her eyes closed as she listens, “It must’ve been lonely.”

“Not really, as Syr said before. There was Midnight, and Rock, and the others.” Nadia looks away as I say as much. “It is dangerous though, and cold. Very cold.”

“It would be. How did you manage to survive the predators, surely you weren’t able to fight off wolven or great bears even back then?”

“Wolven aren’t much of a problem, Syr had to fight great bears every so often though. Their fur is the thickest.”

“Wolven aren’t a problem?” She sounds a little confused, “Aren’t they the most dangerous?”

“They’re smart, really smart, they just don’t talk much,” I tell her. “When Syr was dying from her wounds, one of the wolven saved her. Taught her healing magic. What to hunt, what not to hunt. The wolven are nice.”

“Huh…” the sound just escapes her lips, “I’ve never really heard of anything like that before… Maybe it’s elvish bias again? Hatred for necromancy bleeding into our judgment? Then again, I’ve never heard anything like that from mercs, either…”

“You hate necromancy, too?” I ask before I can think.

“Of course. The dead should be given proper respect, some burn their dead, some bury them, but to use them as tools… it’s abhorrent.” She sneers, “I’ve thought of it a lot, challenging my upbringing and culture, but even so, necromancy is just wrong.

“I guess it’s different for wolven. Perhaps to them, necromancy is their way of respecting their dead… I suppose, that it’s not my place to judge,” she looks at me with a difficult smile, but I look away.

Nearby the mercs train their swords and spears, practise their magics, and study how best to kill. How many would turn their claws on me if they found out? How many people in this town would want me dead?

I want to go to Adeleya.

“What...” Nadia begins, her face stern, “I want to know what happened in Cildr. Who did it and why? The elders, they all act as if it’s nothing important. They blindly accept it,” She says as she lightly claws at her own arms.

“They shouldn’t get away with it, we should track down whoever else is responsible and make sure it doesn’t happen again. We should do something about it.”

“It was bandits, they took what they wanted. That’s it,” I tell her.

“There’s more… I don’t know everything yet. No, I don’t know anything really. But those bandits went past countless vulnerable villages, they brought so many people out here, all to attack a small town like Cildr, and then defend it of all things.”

“What do you mean?” They turned it into a bandit camp, didn’t they? Isn’t that normal?

“Bandits strike then disappear before the guild gets involved, or a group as big as theirs should be more concerned over soldiers getting called to arms. But they didn’t run. And no soldiers went out. Even the guild had trouble sending people out there.”

Why would they refuse to send soldiers? Wouldn’t the local lord want the bandits gone?

“None of it matches up, and I need to know why. Are you sure you don’t recall anything peculiar?”

“They burned the town, and they killed everyone,” I tell her, “That’s all Syr knows.”

Nadia sighs deeply, “I suppose it was never going to be easy.”

“Why?”

“Why, what?”

“Why are you looking into it?” I ask.

She looks down at me and rests her hand on my head, looking away into the distance.

“It hurts to outlive the ones you love.” For some reason, I feel that she doesn’t want me to see her face right now as she gazes listlessly beyond the target.

Cildr…

She’s obsessed with the dead, the ones she’s lost in that town of ash.

Whatever she does she won’t get them back.

Ash is ash. That’s all it can ever be.