Eld opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. He was in bed, his childhood bed. The sun was beginning to rise, and other than a small itching around his knee, Eld felt fine. He sighed in relief, not relief from the pain but relief in the knowledge that he must have had a nightmare. It was morning on the day his team would leave town and finally become an adventuring party. John hadn't crushed his leg, and the team hadn't left him without saying goodbye. Whatever he thought he remembered, Eld knew it was just a dream. A sliver of sun glanced through the window, striking Eld's eye, and realization struck.

  Daybreak

  The team said they would meet at daybreak, and Eld was late. He wasn't even packed. Eld ripped off the covers and leapt into action… or at least he tried to. His weight came down hard on a right leg that was no longer there.

  Martha heard the thump and then Eld's scream. The despair in that cry broke something in her as she rushed out of the kitchen mid-breakfast prep to help her son. Customers' loud complaints about the slow service reverberated through the thin floorboards of Eld's room, but Martha ignored them as she held her son. When he calmed and was silent, she explained to him what had happened two nights before.

  “I rushed you to the healer's temple. Do you remember Yours and Thelia’s teacher, Priest Kyn? He saved your life, said he couldn't believe you were still breathing after the blood loss from your… from your leg.”

  Eld didn't respond. He just pressed his face into his mother's sleeve and listened as she spoke.

  “We tried to save it, Eld, we did really, but Priest Kyn, well, he's a rural Priest, Eld, he can't repair… well, you know…”

  Five more minutes passed like that in silence until he pushed himself away from his mother's embrace. He began to pull himself back into bed and pushed his mother away when she tried to help him. It wasn't a pretty thing, but he managed to crawl back under the covers and hide his face from her.

  “Eld… can you tell me what happened? You were supposed to go south, right? How did you end up in the Yedda woods?”

  Eld didn't respond. His mother drew conclusions from that, and though she grimaced, she pushed through and asked again.

  “Eld, I know it must be hard to talk about, but please, son. Priest Kyn is distraught at your injuries in part for what they might mean for Thelia. If she is… passed, it is the kind thing to do to tell him so that he can mourn properly.”

  More silence.

  “Eld…” Martha started, but then felt she could not push him further, as sure as if a social skill had been levied against her, Martha knew she could push her son no further.

  Eld's silence stretched, and no attempt to speak to him elicited a reaction. Not when his mother brought him food. Not when his father tried to make him peel potatoes for dinner, not when Priest Kyn stormed into his room and demanded answers as his parents wrestled the surly healer from the room.

  Eld just lay there, staring at the ceiling. Many people stopped by to convince him to get out of bed. Eld wasn't catatonic. He heard their arguments. Many were good. Yet, unless it was for food or to wash himself, Eld could not bring himself to move. It wasn’t related to any physical scar but an internal indecision. If he moved, he would have to answer questions, and he couldn’t.

  A part of Eld would speak to him as if a voice inside his own head.

  “You can't wallow like this forever.” Rational Eld would insist.

  Then the despondent Eld would reply. “To what end?”

  “You wanted to delve into dungeons and protect people from the horrors within. Every day you lie here is a day wasted toward that goal, another person dead,” a dutiful part of his mind argued.

  “I wanted to be famous and rich,” the cynical Eld replied. “And what good would I be on an adventure? Or in a dungeon.” Already, his heartskill represented a nearly insurmountable hurdle for an adventurer. Now? With two levels in an uncommon class, and one not even built for fighting, Eld was doomed, even if he still had his right leg below the knee. Even with a working left arm, he would still have been seen as a cripple.

  “You can still take over the bakery.” A hopeless Eld offered.

  “[Survivor] dumb ass!!! What kind of skills can a [Survivor] get that would help in a kitchen?” A realist Eld screamed back.

  The internal fight escalated slowly each time he had it until eventually, as the grief and anger threatened to overwhelm him, Eld pushed the thoughts away and focused them on the ceiling alone.

  “You can't let John get away with…” Ceiling

  “Thelia, Jesse, and Mica were in danger traveling…” Ceiling.

  “Your parents will kick you…” Ceiling.

  “Maybe this class isn't so bad. What if you can find synchrony with…” Ceiling.

  Each day was a fight longer and more bitter than his crawl through the forest, and just like that horror, each day ended in only partial success when a thought that could not be deflected, dodged, or rejected finally broke through the ceiling and crushed him.

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  The worst indulgence of his mind, waking or sleeping, was to imagine the moment John told the rest of the party that he wouldn't be going with them to Kerdis.

  He pictured it with such clarity it was as if he was a butterfly flitting around the scene.

  John would run to meet the group on the road.

  “Hey team, sorry for running late.” John panted. Eld knew John could run miles and hardly break a sweat, so the panting was just a manipulation.

  “Where's Eld?” Thelia would ask, he was certain. He could see the confusion and concern on her face, while Jesse and Micah would look to each other and speak in that wordless way those raised together do.

  “I just came from his house and uh… I'm sad to be the one to tell you all this, but Eld isn't coming with us.”

  At this point, John would lift up his hands, defusing an attack that never came, and say. “Before any of you call him a coward for backing out, I'll have you know that I think what Eld is doing is far braver than going into a dungeon.” It was a way of speaking John had, a way he controlled the conversation.

  “Eld had time to think last night in a way he didn't the night before, and at first I wasn't convinced either, but you have to see things from Eld's perspective. He isn't like us; he wasn't an orphan taken in by the church like you Thelia. He didn't have to be the father to all his younger siblings like me, and he wasn't raised by Robin the raider like you or Micah, Jesse. Eld has a real family and future in Yedda, and that's something to be praised! The greatest desire of my life would be to give my children a chance at that security.”

  “That's stupid, c'mon lets go haul his ass out with us.” Jesse would sigh, but John would keep talking. The way he always did when the team didn't agree with him.

  “Eld entrusted me with this answer because he knew he couldn't tell the team to its face. He came to me hat in hand to ask me to do it for him, and we need to respect the boundary he set. This was a hard enough choice, Jesse. We shouldn't rub it in.

  Micah would nod in agreement easily. Eld remembered how often he and Micah argued.

  “Surely we can convince him.” Thelia would start, and John would cut her momentum off at the knees.

  “Don't you think I tried that?” John would rasp, letting a bit of the insanity from earlier color his eyes. “I made every argument I could, and he passed.”

  “OK thats great and all, but it was his saved-up baking wages that were supposed to get us lodging in Kedris.” Jesse would say. Always the quickest to see a problem.

  And John would respond so readily.

  He'd pull out the years of saved money that his parents had paid him at the bakery, and jingle it, just enough for the sound of silver nobles clinking together to reach the party's ear.

  “I told you all, Eld was a hero for making this call. He is giving up his dream so that we might have a better chance at our own without him weighing us down.” John would pivot from surprise to benefit.

  “Eld made his choice, and now we have to make ours. We can return to the village and live the same fate the town has been pressing us toward since childhood. Or we can take another step toward the future.” John would point at the winding road into the dark forest. “We owe it to Eld to keep following our dream. The fact that we only lost one member of the team to lacking potential is actually a huge win for us.”

  Eld pictured the team arguing and wondered about how long they actually spent trying to convince John to come back for him. Did they talk for an hour as the sun ascended the sky, or did the debate end in seconds? He hoped it had been a lengthy discussion, but in his bones, he knew it had not been.

  It was not hope, or jealousy, pragmatism, or complacency that eventually got Eld out of bed. Eld was moved instead by a letter and rage.

  “Great news, Eld! Your party is alive.” Martha called to her son.

  “Here, read it, Master Kyn said I could show it to you; it's from Thelia.”

  Eld snatched the letter from the air and read carefully, even as he learned the letter wasn't addressed to him.

  Priest Kyn,

  I have great news, and ill news, though you've probably already heard the ill. We can start with the bad and finish on the good, kinda like the honey we used to have after dinner.

  Eld decided not to adventure with us. You, above all others, know the sting this leaves on my taste for adventure, but though I do not know Eld's thoughts, he is the man whose mind I trust above all others in matters of wisdom.

  Travel so far has gone well, and we made it to Kerdis with time to spare. We told the story of how fast we got to town, and it apparently was overheard by a few people because it got us a meeting with the adventurer's guild!

  Eld gave us enough money to last three weeks in the city to give us the chance to get in with the guild, but John pulled it off in a day, and lucky thing too. I had no idea how long it took to get your first job after interviewing with the guild. Two weeks and several meetings later, we made it! We're bronze rank adventurers! I can hardly sleep. Tomorrow is our first job! We'll be clearing out rats in the sewer, which is a gross, but John says doing shitty jobs is how you earn respect from guild types. I'm just glad we don't have to do the return walk. I'm not sure I would survivehaving to turn back.

  Love,

  Thelia.

  Eld crumbled and tossed the paper to the ground, and screamed at his mother.

  “Get out!”

  “Eld don't crumple another person's letter!” She scolded as she rushed to grab the paper.

  “I SAID GET OUT!”

  “Eld… what has gotten into you? I thought you'd be happy to hear from… What happened out there?”

  Eld lept at her then. Weeks of lying there had accustomed him in no way to the missing limb, and so his flailing attempt to eject her forcibly from the room fell flat.

  “Just leave ma, get out.”

  That night, his ceiling trick failed him again, and it wasn't just the image of John explaining his absence to the rest of his friends; it was everything. His mind indulged in every rotten fantasy of his pitiful situation. From one moment to the next, each scene cycled in an unending stream; he was unable to stop by thought alone.

  Crack

  He smashed his skull against the wooden post beside his bed. Again and again, he cracked it, but the pain refused to drive the thoughts away. It continued, and Eld pleaded to the heavens and begged for an answer that did not come.

  In time, he calmed, sheets soaked in sweat and blood, and he felt… not good, but he felt in respite from the visions.

  With new desperation, Eld asked himself. “How can I avoid that from happening again?” He had no answer, but he knew someone who might.