The next few days were an odd combination of relief and pain. The first was the most explicable. After all, the expedition into the Primal Realm had been through hell. They’d watched thousands of their comrades die, often in gruesome ways. Seeing a friend getting ripped apart by trolls was one thing, but seeing them slowly starve until they could scarcely lift their spears was something else altogether.

  The people who’d ventured into the Red Marsh had witnessed both, all while fighting for their own lives against the enemy, the setting, and their circumstances. Of course they would be relieved.

  Pain was probably easier to understand, though a bit more complicated. Not only were they forced to deal with the consequences of their myriad injuries, which left many of them gruesomely scarred, but they also had to cope with the agony of combined grief and regret.

  And Elijah had no choice but to watch it all unfold. He could heal physical injuries, but he could do nothing to mitigate the psychological trauma of venturing into the Red Marsh.

  But there was a spark of hope, too. Their mission was successful, after all. They had conquered the Primal Realm and been rewarded for their efforts. Most had gained dozens of levels, and a few had even managed to advance their cultivation – often through necessity. Despite the losses, the survivors added up to a much stronger force than the one that had left Ironshore more than a year ago.

  Elijah’s friends and family were no different. They all felt much denser than they had before they’d entered, and even Sadie had managed to gain quite a few levels along the way. The rest of the army had followed suit.

  But no one had gained quite as much as Miguel. According to Sadie, the young man fought like someone with fifty more levels under his belt, which meant that he gained significantly more experience for each kill. As a result, his progression had skyrocketed like no one else’s, and he’d soared past most of the rest of the army. Only the elites like Sadie and Oscar had come away from the experience at a higher level.

  The one who’d benefited the second most was Kurik, but that was predictable. The dwarf was tailor-made for the situation, and even his least powerful traps had proven to be more than effective against the trolls. He too had experienced a significant rise in power.

  Finally, there was Ron.

  Unfortunately, he had been forced to use his healing abilities nearly constantly. If he wasn’t curing diseases or cleansing infections, he was treating horrific battle wounds. How he’d managed to keep it all together amidst such carnage was a mystery to Elijah, who had some experience healing in the wake of a battle.

  But while Elijah could maintain it for a few days, he knew he’d have gone insane if he’d had to do so for months at a time. Ron had done just that, and along with the expedition’s other Healers, he’d experienced quite a bit of growth himself. If he hadn’t been the most powerful Healer on Earth before, he certainly was now.

  That wasn’t to say that their power hadn’t come with more concrete consequences. Scars, both mental and physical, would be with them for the rest of their lives. Elijah was well-acquainted with both, though he had no idea how to apply that first-hand knowledge to the situation.

  A therapist, he was not.

  Regardless, most of them pretended they hadn’t been affected. The worst among them was Sadie, but Kurik came in a close second. After that initial outburst of emotion, Sadie had gone on to pretend she was entirely unbothered by it all. Elijah didn’t buy her stoicism for a second, largely because he’d been right where she currently was. He’d felt what she was feeling. He’d tried to act as if he was okay, too. But even if he’d known how to help her, doing so required her consent. She wouldn’t be helped unless she wanted to be helped.

  And she didn’t.

  Kurik was a little better. He’d acknowledged his own vulnerability, but his response was to throw himself into work. Specifically, applying some of his new abilities to the traps protecting the island. More than once, he’d waded into the surf, muttering about being disappointed in his past self for thinking the old incarnations of the traps were adequate.

  Elijah wasn’t certain if that was a healthier response to trauma than Sadie’s, so he’d responded by making it clear that he was there to talk, should the need arise. It had not.

  By contrast, Miguel was more open with his emotions, though not to Elijah. When he wasn’t training, he was with Hope, and she functioned as his coping mechanism. Elijah tried to give them privacy, but so long as they were within the locus of his domain, he saw everything. And despite his efforts to ignore it, he still caught glimpses here and there.

  Thankfully, Hope seemed to be a very empathetic person who was well-suited to being a shoulder for Miguel to cry on.

  Oddly, Oscar seemed to enjoy a similar relationship with Nara. They certainly weren’t a couple – not yet – but Elijah could read the signs well enough that he expected it to happen eventually. And he was happy for his friend. Oscar had experienced quite a lot of trauma in his own right, and he deserved something good in his life. And Nara definitely qualified for that label. There wasn’t a violent bone in the sea elf’s body, which was a rarity Elijah had seldom witnessed.

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  They were good for one another.

  Oscar had also finally decided to use the Heritage Crystal, having set it up in a small cabin he’d built near Biggle’s enclave. From what Elijah could tell, they’d picked up a new member of the pack as well. Perhaps not officially, but it was only a matter of time before that became the case. At present, the crow followed them everywhere.

  The least affected by the ordeal was Carmen, though Colt wasn’t far behind. Both had already reintegrated themselves into their old lives, with Colt heading to the Legion Academy to teach the next generation of legionnaires. Meanwhile, Carmen had already planted herself in her smithy within the Forge of Creation.

  When Elijah had offered to talk about things with Carmen, she’d scoffed, “I’m fine. My son’s alive, my friends made it, and we accomplished the mission. In this world, that’s all any of us can ask for.”

  Then, she’d gone back to work, smashing her hammer into a hunk of hot metal.

  Did Elijah believe she was okay? Not really. But she’d already established that her way of dealing with things was to focus on work, and Elijah was in no position to help her find other ways to process.

  It was the same with everyone else. They all had their individual ways of coping with everything that had happened, and all Elijah could do was make himself available.

  Which was a bit of a problem, considering that he needed to leave soon. Now that he’d confirmed that everyone was okay, the impending foray into the Labyrinth of Dead Gods loomed over him. It was a responsibility he’d so far managed to ignore, but without worry over his friends’ and family’s fate, he could no longer afford to keep it on the backburner.

  “I’m going with you.”

  “What?” asked Elijah, looking up from the supplies he’d been cataloguing. His food orders had been filled, and he needed to empty his spatial storage to make room for everything. That meant removing superfluous supplies and whatever junk he’d managed to accumulate since the last time he’d emptied the Arcane Loop.

  “I said I’m going with you,” Sadie repeated, having just stepped out of the shower. Seeing her without her armor was confirmation that she’d lost a ton of weight that she couldn’t spare. She’d never had much fat on her – courtesy of her training, both before and after the world’s transformation – but the ordeal in the Red Marsh had robbed her of what little she’d managed to accumulate. The repercussions of starvation were laid bare by her nudity.

  “Sadie…”

  “I don’t want to hear any arguments,” she stated as she reached into a nearby cabinet for some clothes. “I made a mistake with the Red Marsh. I underestimated just how difficult it would be to conquer. And I’m not going to repeat that error. You can probably defeat it on your own, but I’m not taking that chance. I’m going with you.”

  Elijah looked away.

  He wanted to tell her that bringing her along would only make things more difficult for him. If she’d been in the Broken Crown with him, she would have died. There wasn’t a doubt in Elijah’s mind about that.

  Yet, how could he say as much? Moreover, he was already going to be saddled with both Benedict and Hu Shui. And Sadie was at least as capable as either one of them.

  As Sadie pulled on a pair of underwear, she added, “No more splitting up. Either we fight together or not at all.”

  Elijah gestured at her partially clothed body, then said, “Hard to argue with a topless woman.”

  “Can’t resist my half-starved feminine wiles?”

  “Something like that.”

  She sat next to him on the bed. “I underestimated the Primal Realm,” she admitted after a few moments. “I thought it would be like the Desolate Reach.”

  “They get stronger,” Elijah pointed out.

  “Intellectually, I know that,” she countered. “But I saw what you did in the Chimeric Forge, what you and Oscar did in the Elemental Maelstrom, and I thought the danger was overblown. I thought…I thought of it as an opportunity, not an obligation. Not a deadly necessity. I won’t make that same mistake again, and I won’t let you do it either.”

  “Let me?”

  “You heard what I said. Everyone else might be impressed by your advancement, but I’m not,” she said.

  He cut his eyes at her. “Not even a little?” he asked. “Your boyfriend is a mighty dragon.”

  “Ugh. Don’t refer to yourself like that,” she said with a roll of her eyes.

  He rested his hand on her thigh, which tensed under his touch. “Still?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I’m trying to get past it,” Sadie replied.

  For the past couple of years, Elijah had managed to convince himself that Sadie’s Sense of Sin had been defeated. However, recent events had put the lie to that idea. Whether it was because she’d grown stronger or due to his actions outside of Seattle, Elijah wasn’t certain. What he did know – what he couldn’t ignore – was that Sadie flinched a little every time he touched her.

  She tried to hide it, and most of the time, she was successful. But with his senses, Elijah could feel the tiniest of flinches. And he couldn’t ignore the subtle tension she felt in his presence.

  It broke his heart every time he acknowledged it.

  “I will fix it,” she said, her voice quivering with the strain. “I promise. This isn’t me. It’s the ability.”

  “I know,” was Elijah’s reply. He attempted to keep his disappointment – or sadness, perhaps – from infecting his tone, but he knew he was only partially successful. And she knew him well enough to recognize it for what it was. “It’s fine. It’ll be fine. You overcame it before, and you’ll do it again.”

  But deep down, he wasn’t so sure. After all, he’d killed a lot of elves. Enough to push him into level two-forty-nine. It didn’t matter that they were the aggressors. Not to Sense of Sin, at least. According to that ability, a kill was a kill. Sure, some of them counted for more than others, but Sadie had yet to figure out how it determined the difference. And if she didn’t know, then Elijah definitely didn’t.

  Regardless, it was frustrating to suddenly be reminded of their incompatibility. Elijah would never refer to it that way aloud. He wanted the relationship to keep going, and he believed Sadie did as well. Yet, with the obstacle of her class looming over them, that seemed less likely by the day.

  “We’ll get through it,” Sadie assured, forcing herself to lean into him. The tension remained. “This is just…it’s just another thing to overcome.”

  “Yeah. Just another obstacle. And we’re good at beating the odds.”

  That much was true, even if the underlying sentiment felt a bit hollow.

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