Matthaeus dropped off the side of the saddle with relief, stretching his legs after another day of riding. Lucy shook her mane next to him, huffing as her eyes darted around the small forest clearing, eyeing up every patch of grass still visible in the dim twilight.

“You remember what to do?” Griff asked, having dismounted Umber just ahead. Matthaeus nodded slowly, having to strain to remember all of the words Griff had spoken. He didn’t know some of them, but he understood the meaning of the sentence all the same.

“Sa-ddle,” he whispered to himself as he ran his hands over the dark brown leather harness that wrapped around Reyland’s mare. “Ho-erse, sa-ddle.”

He stumbled through the words, marred by his thick accent, as he began taking off Lucy’s saddle and bags for Reyland.

The young apprentice watched from beside him, arms folded and nodding pensively.

“Aye, looks like the lil’ tyke’s got it, then” Reyland commented, immediately trying to slip away.

“Reyland,” Griff called over his shoulder, without looking up from the pack he was digging through.

The bronze haired apprentice sighed, and turned around on his heel once again to stand by Matthaeus. The boy hadn’t paid them any mind, he was too focused on the task at hand.

Did this clasp come undone next, or did this one stay together, and that knot gets untied instead, or…?

Matthaeus kept working it through, undoing bags and straps one by one until finally, the saddle slid off towards him. With a strained ‘oof’ he caught it, the heavy saddle right on the edge of what he could lift.

“Hey, that was faster than the last few nights, aye? You’re getting better, lil’ tyke,” Reyland said approvingly, taking the now loose saddle from him and setting it on top of some bags. “Pretty soon we’ll have to be teaching you how to ride a horse for yourself, at this rate.”

Matthaeus nodded once, though he didn’t really get the message. But, a sense of pride swelled in him at being able to do the small chore assigned to him.

“Reyland,” Griff called again, causing both boys to look over. “Take this, get plenty of firewood. Matthaeus, gather sticks.”

The last bit he had spoken in Norlin, as he handed a small axe over to Reyland. Reyland took it and gave it a few swings, holding it like a sword until a glare from Griff caused him to grin sheepishly, putting the axe away in a leather loop on his belt.

“Right, then. This way, don’t fall too far behind,” Reyland chirped, striding off into the woods away from where Griff was setting up the camp.

Matthaeus had to hurry just a bit to keep up with the apprentice’s long strides, falling into step just beside Reyland as his amber eyes scanned the forest.

“Gonna need a damn big fire tonight,” Reyland said once they were a short distance from the clearing. “No more farmhouses to take shelter in, gonna need something else to keep the ‘ole beasties away. You just focus on kindling, aye? I’ll grab the big stuff.”

Matthaeus looked at him in confusion, and Reyland reached down, picked up a stick, and handed it to him.

“Kindling,” he said slowly, and Matthaeus nodded.

“Big stuff,” Reyland said proudly, putting one foot up on the trunk of a fallen tree as he drew the axe. “Keep your distance while I’m swingin’ the axe, aye?”

Matthaeus nodded seriously, then watched for a moment as Reyland began chopping off the limbs of the tree with the practised ease of someone who had done so countless times. Then, the young boy turned his attention to the forest, which had steadily grown darker over the past few hours. They still had plenty of time until sunset, but here within the dense evergreens and the few hardwoods with their brilliant autumn foliage, it was already growing dim. Matthaeus wandered off a bit from Reyland, listening to the sounds of him chopping away at the downed tree, and began collecting the dryest sticks he could find.

They had been travelling together now for a few days since the farmhouse, having stayed in a number of other abandoned buildings for the nights since. But now, it seemed they’d left the farmlands, and entered another area of dense forest, similar to what Arcaster had been in.

It had only been about a week since they left Arcaster, and their destination was soon approaching, or so Griff and Reyland had informed him. Still, the little routine they had settled into seemed almost pleasant to Matthaeus, after the chaos that had been his first memories. They woke before dawn, rode for most of the day, not even stopping to eat. Instead they ate or drank from horseback, only stopping briefly every few hours for a quick break. Then, when evening came, they looked for a place to stay, and made camp. Sometimes a house, sometimes a barn, sometimes a field.

Matthaeus had taken over the chores of tending to Reyland’s mare, and had been slowly learning the words for the items they carried. He still wasn’t confident enough to speak full sentences, but he was learning more every day…

He made several trips back and forth to Griff, quietly checking on what the man was doing when he dropped his sticks off. Griff paid him little mind, setting up a canvas lean-to next to a stone circle fire pit he had built. Matthaeus had started learning some of the knots Griff was using, but he wasn’t very good at them yet.

Reyland too made several trips, carrying piles of chopped logs and thick branches with him each time. Pretty soon, they had a respectable camp set up.

The clearing was more of a patch than a field, an opening in the forest canopy where the branches above gave way to sky. Directly under the centre of the opening was the stone pit and kindling that Reyland quickly sparked and fanned into flame, casting long shadows across the woods. Griff had set up two lean-tos, one for himself and another for Matthaeus and Reyland, where they both laid out their sleeping rolls. A bitter wind was coming through the clearing, but with the lean-to blocking most of it and the fire warming them, Matthaeus hardly felt the cold. It was warmer than he was used to, anyway.

He paused for a moment, holding the fire-poking stick he had been using to play with the fire in one outstretched hand. Just… just what was he used to, exactly?

A hollow sort of feeling built in him, as he failed to grasp a memory that felt just out of reach.

“You taking first watch, Griff?” Reyland asked, also poking at the fire with a stick from where he sat side-by-side with Matthaeus. “Or am I?”

“Get some rest,” Griff rumbled back from the other side of the fire. “I’ll take first watch. I’ll wake you when it’s time.”

“Don’t gotta tell me twice,” Reyland said with a yawn, tossing his poking stick into the fire carelessly. Matthaeus watched it smoulder and burn almost instantly in the large, crackling bonfire they’d made. “G’night, sleep tight, don’t let the drakehounds bite.”

Matthaeus caught Griff sighing and pinching the bridge of his nose as his apprentice crawled into his bed roll, turned over, then seemingly fell asleep in an instant. Matthaeus was almost jealous of how quickly the young Arklander could do that.

Griff continued tending the fire in silence for a while, sitting across from Matthaeus so that the tallest tongues of flame distorted their view of each other. It was peaceful, in a way, but for a certain tension that hadn’t left Matthaeus in the past few days.

The signs of beasts, these drakehounds as Reyland and Griff called them, had only become more frequent. Matthaeus could only guess what they looked like, and the prints they left behind gave his imagination plenty of room to roam.

The prints were clawed paws, like a large cat or dog, though the claw marks were several inches away from the pads of the feet. They left deep gouges into the earth wherever they went, though the tracks were few and far between. Still, Griff and Reyland seemed to be noticing more than him, and the constant unknown had been lurking in the back of Matthaeus’ mind.

“Are you not tired?” Griff asked, and Matthaeus responded by pulling himself closer to the fire, sitting hugging his knees to his chest. His hair was long and unkempt, falling over his face as he peeked out at the older man. “I’ll take that as a no, then.”

A long moment of silence passed, broken only by the snapping and crackling of the fire.

“If you’re looking for a bedtime story, I’m afraid I’ve long forgotten any I might once have known,” Griff said in Norlin quietly, as he tended to the fire.

Matthaeus shook his head. He could feel Griff eyeing him through the tongues of flame, but still he did not speak. He didn’t even know what to say, exactly, or what to ask.

“Are you worried?” Griff asked after a moment, and something about Matthaeus must have given it away, for a moment later Griff hummed as if Matthaeus had agreed. “I see.”

“Drakehounds fear flame,” Griff continued, drawing his greatsword from its sheath. “Flame, and blade. Cowardly beasts, really.”

From a pouch on his pack Griff drew a small, round stone, onto which he poured a drop of something from a tiny flask in his pack. Then, in tiny, slow, practised motions, he began running the stone along the edge of his sword in a circular pattern. The constant rasping sound of stone on metal joined the cracking of the fire and the gruff baritone of Griff’s voice, quietly filling the night air with more than just wind.

“They are smaller than most beasts, despite their distant relation to wyrms. Not much larger than a dog, though closer to a cat in shape, in spite of their name.”

“Ambush predators, we call them. They won’t ever come from the front, no, they’re opportunists. Nasty, clever little things with acid in their spit and malice in their very blood. They’re such successful hunters they’ve no worries of starving, leaving them time to hunt for nothing but sport.”

Matthaeus leaned forwards into his knees, listening carefully to every word. The heat of the flame licked at his face, right on the brink of becoming uncomfortably warm, but it was a welcome feeling.

“They hunt by laying in wait above their prey, in branches, under bridges, wherever their gnarled little claws can find purchase. And when their prey walks underneath, they leap. The stinger on their tails holds a poison that paralyses, and the acid in their mouths turns flesh to paste in minutes.”

“It helps, of course, that they hunt in packs. A dozen, sometimes two dozen strong. Allows them to bring in prey many times their own size. Prey which they eat alive, as most beasts do.”

Griff stopped sharpening his blade, raising it up high and appraising it carefully with one eye closed. It was the first time Matthaeus had seen it drawn, up close, in a moment where it wasn’t being used.

Matthaeus felt uneasy just looking at it. The blade was single edged, with a thick spine and a gentle curve. Just like his dagger and Reyland’s shortsword, and all other Order weapons, the edge of the blade was wavy like a flame, sweeping into graceful yet vicious curves.

It was a weapon for rending flesh, and nothing else.

“While they may seem frightening off that description,” Griff continued, lowering his sword and beginning to sharpen the other side. “They’re one of the least threatening beasts in these lands to those who are prepared.”

“As the old stories would go, they were chased from the mountains where the larger wyrms live, spurned by the dragonfire that they themselves can not claim. Supposedly this is why, despite their wyrm scales which repel flame itself, they flee from its presence.”

“It takes a mere campfire to turn them aside, send them hunting other prey. Even still, people fail that one simple thing quite often, as it would turn out.”

There was no change in Griff’s tone, no emotion, no shift in facial expression. He spoke as if he were discussing the simple facts of life. Yet, somehow, Matthaeus could sense a certain bitterness underneath it. A hardness that came from a lifetime of seeing things Matthaeus could not even imagine.

“So always remember this one thing, when Drakehounds are near,” Griff said grimly, setting down his blade and picking up a long stick. Matthaeus leaned in even closer, wide awake and with all of his attention on the man’s flame-distorted features.

“Watch above you, always, and do not let your fire go out.”

Then, Griff poked the bonfire near the centre, sending a pile of logs collapsing onto each other. A plume of sparks shot into the air with a burst of hot wind, and Matthaeus had to lean back away from the fire, covering his face.

It was then that he saw it. On a branch, not twenty feet above them. A black silhouette, feline, with a long tail and a pair of eyes that glinted yellow in the firelight. His heart spiked immediately, he flinched downwards, hands coming up to protect himself… as the beast hissed, and disappeared. The plume of sparks had reached the canopy, and almost as fast as the eye could follow, the beast was gone, darting from branch to branch away from them.

The sound of another dozen sets of claws scraping against branches and the rustling of leaves accompanied the first, as the entire canopy suddenly became empty.

Matthaeus’ heart was beating out of his chest, staring at every branch, his unadjusted eyes trying to pick out the shapes of beasts lying in wait… but he could see nothing.

Across from him, Griff had not moved. He removed the stick from the fire, laying it calmly at his side, before picking up his sword once again and continuing to sharpen it.

“So long as your fire does not die in the night, you have nothing to fear,” Griff said simply, and Matthaeus felt his heart at last begin to slow.

As the adrenaline left his veins, a deep exhaustion came over him, and a cold wind sent a shiver through him in spite of the fire. He soon made his way over to his own bed roll, tucked under the lean-to side by side with Reyland. He crawled inside, not for the first time wishing his bed roll was fur rather than the tough yet warm fabric it was.

He shivered a bit, knowing the bed roll would warm soon, but dreading the few minutes it would take while it was still too cold to sleep in.

“Sometimes I don’t know what that man’s thinking,” Reyland suddenly whispered. Matthaeus looked over curiously, surprised to see the apprentice still awake. He was laying on his side, facing Matthaeus, though his eyes were still closed. “Telling something like that to a kid in a situation like this.”

Did he understand Griff speaking Norlin? Matthaeus wondered, picking up enough of what Reyland had said.

“Don’t go worryin’ about the beasties, lil’ tyke,” Reyland mumbled, barely half awake. “He ain’t good with people, but Griff’s a Master Ordained for a reason… and I ain’t too shabby either. We’ll keep you safe, so’s… get some sleep…”

Matthaeus watched as the apprentice seemed to fully doze off again. Then, he rolled over on his back and stared out the side of the lean-to, where far above, the twin moons shone down from a starlit sky on their little camp in the woods. He wondered if the sky in the Norlands looked the same, whether the stars and the moons appeared in the same place. Or did the Norlands have entirely different stars? He supposed he wouldn’t remember either way, even if it did.

Maybe he’d ask Griff about it tomorrow. Something told him Griff would know.

As his bed roll warmed Matthaeus relaxed, and very soon, he closed his eyes comfortably as they grew heavy. In spite of it all, the Blight, the drakehounds, and anything else that they may find, Matthaeus had realised something.

He felt safe. With Reyland, and with Griff. They were larger than life in a way, heroes just like he’d been told the Ordained were. But yet, they were people. Here, right in front of him. Talking to him, teaching him Arkasian, teaching him to saddle a horse and ride… protecting him.

Matthaeus opened his eyes and looked up at the stars again, and the two moons that shone down from above.

Maybe he’d lost something precious before, when he lost his memories and wound up in Arkasia.

But then, maybe he’d gained something precious, too.