Kur sighed heavily when, about thirty minutes later, they exited Juf’s tent.

  “Kur—actually, never mind,” Leon said. “You probably should go around and chat with some more party leaders, right? I’ll return to the others and we’ll start planning.”

  Kur sighed again and this time his shoulders slouched forward, as though a great weight was crushing him.

  “Is he… mad at you?” Nar asked, watching as Leon marched towards the edge of the camp.

  “I think so, and I can probably guess as to why,” Kur said. “But this isn’t the place. Come on. Like he says, I might as well use this opportunity to go visit a few people.”

  Over the course of the next few hours, Nar followed silently after Kur as his party leader chatted with several others in Juf’s camp. Most of them were the friendly ones that Kur had greeted on their way to Juf’s tent, and others were people who acted a lot more reserved and distant, and these were the one’s Kur spent the most time with.

  They talked about the delve, their parties, difficulties, advice and counsel, and even the current training and challenges that individual party members were currently facing or undertaking, all this done in a kind of speech that to Nar was still akin to fencing, each side seeking supremacy over the word with just the weight of their words alone.

  By the time Kur said his goodbyes to the last party leader, and guided Nar away from camp, Nar had long engaged his self-healing to stave off the pounding headache that had been threatening to explode for hours now.

  “What did you think?” Kur asked, as he guided Nar not to where they would be meeting the others, but to a quiet spot by the shore of the Great Lake.

  “I think I never want to come with you again,” Nar muttered, rubbing his temples. “Why was everyone so damned hostile? How can they so easily forget that we’re all the same and that we all came from the same damned place! We should be united as auramancers out here!”

  “I think so too, but the leadership faculty has fomented competition amongst us in order to prepare us for the harsh realities of the Nexus,” Kur said, sighing as he dropped himself by the colorful, soft waves. “Things out there are not kind, Nar. And we have been spared the most of it by signing up with Tsurmirel. Believe it or not.”

  “Still…”

  “Plus, you’re wrong. We’re not all the same,” Kur continued, his eyes lost in the distant purple horizon. “We might have been all Climbers before, and even then we were never united by anything other than our need to survive and to get out of the B-Nex. Or have you forgotten how we all ran for ourselves at the end, or that there were those willing to kill to steal those AUCs from their fellow Climbers?”

  Nar dropped beside Kur. “So you’re saying that we can’t count on them anymore?”

  “Oh, when push comes to shove, we can. But maybe not all of them. And after this delve, with the Merit System kicking in, and the Circle fully beginning its competition? That remains to be seen,” Kur muttered. “For now, maybe we can only rely on ourselves, and the Nexus really is that kind of place.”

  “And Row’s party?”

  “Row? Ah! I think we’ll always be able to count on them, and there are others like them,” Kur said, smiling. “We should probably introduce all the party members in my faction to each other.”

  Nar chuckled. “Does that mean we should call you faction leader from now on, too?”

  “Ugh! Please, don’t,” Kur said, passing a hand over his face. “Only Juf does that. Dak is… Dak is a completely different problem.”

  Nar rubbed Kur’s back. “Will you be okay? I had no idea that things were this crazy over in the leadership class. To be honest, I just thought you guys had nothing to worry about but lectures and exams.”

  “That’s how it was in the beginning,” Kur said. “But this Circle thing got more and more out of hand, and soon we’ll be fighting for everything, Nar. Everything. Dungeons, materials, instruction time… Of course, we’re in a good spot ourselves, but I can’t say the same for Row’s party or the others that are under me, and as their leader, I’ll need to provide for them as well. Meaning, whatever I gain through your contributions, I will have to share.”

  “So, why don’t you do that?” Nar asked.

  Kur snorted. “Tell me that again when you’re waiting forever in line every time you want to get your gear or that crazy sword of yours upgraded! Or when I start up training sessions where their members can receive your instruction, so that I can curry their favor and get stuff that we need back from them as well!”

  Nar stared at him, his mouth forming a silent O.

  “That’s what I thought,” Kur said, shaking his head. “We can’t go into every dungeon, and we have different affinities in the party. If Viy needs weight-aspected aurium to upgrade her halberd, unless we stumble upon it ourselves, we will need to ask for it from the other parties, and surprisingly, XP is the least valuable thing for us now.”

  “That’s fair… But who would want to be taught by me?” Nar asked, his eyebrows nearly reaching his hairline.

  “Let me see… everyone?” Kur asked. “You’re not only being taught by Tys, but also the Master of Blades and the Master of Aura, even if she hasn’t made it completely explicit. Plus, like it or not, Nar, you are the strongest apprentice aboard the Scimitar, and likely by a wide margin. So of course, I need to take advantage of that! Just of the Blades Hall apprentices, they would form a queue for the chance of receiving the Master of Blade’s instruction through you.”

  The strongest apprentice? Nar thought, leaning back on his hands and staring down at the swirl of neon blue, green and red at his feet. Somehow, that feels like… what’s even the right word? A sham?

  He shook his head.

  “As I said before, use me as you need,” Nar told his party leader. “I’m not sure how good I will be, but I will give it my all to support you.”

  “I know that,” Kur said. “Thanks, Nar. I appreciate it.”

  “And so, why is it that you’ve allowed Juf and Dak to take over the Circle?” Nar asked, without preamble.

  “Ouch! Did Gad put you up to this?” Kur muttered, sullen.

  “She didn’t. I volunteered,” Nar said. “I figured that I’ve allowed my own… crap, to distract me long enough from whatever’s going on with you.”

  “Well, not that I’m not glad to hear that, but you know that we haven’t given up on your dad, right?”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  “I know, I know,” Nar said. “We’re talking about you now. So spit.”

  “You do know that Juf and Dak were the raid leaders of—”

  “I know you, Kur,” Nar cut, “and the kind of leader you are. Raid leaders or not, that doesn’t mean shit to you, which means you deliberately let them take over. Why?”

  The buff altei clenched his jaw, and darkness descended upon his ashen brown eyes before Kur’s long, strands of pale blond hair covered them.

  “I… I’ve met an enemy that cannot be defeated,” Kur whispered.

  “What? Who?” Nar asked, frowning. Of all the things he’d been expecting his party leader to say, this was not it. “Is this because of the illatrian?”

  “No, but it is related,” Kur said, sighing. “Do you know what statistics are?”

  Nar nodded. “Sort of… It’s numbers, right?”

  “Statistics, in its very, very basic definition, is the collection and analysis of huge quantities of numerical data in order to find meaning in said data,” Kur explained. “How many people buy X product because of Y conditions? How much XP can be earned from a certain dungeon, given a certain party composition and the characteristics of the dungeon? At what times does the Scimitar’s energy demands spike, so that engineering is ready to handle it? There is a whole mathematical reality underpinning Creation that most people never think about, but which to the powerful and knowledgeable means everything.”

  “So it can predict the future then?” Nar asked.

  “No, and yes, depending on who you ask.” Kur sighed. “It’s a philosophical debate you could get lost in forever. But what is true, is the higher the quality and the quantity of the data gathered, the more certain the meaning you derive from the data becomes.”

  “Go on…”

  “In the Nexus, even with the regular Great Resets occurring every one hundred thousand years, there is a lot of data available, and the more data you have, the more correlation begins to behave as deterministic law,” Kur whispered. “And there is a lot of data about delvers.”

  “Oh,” Nar said.

  He had a feeling now for where Kur was going with all this, and suddenly, he felt… a bitterness? Yes, at the back of his tongue, in his heart, in his core, at what Kur was about to say. Perhaps even fear as well.

  “They told us that a lot of us would die during the apprenticeship,” Nar said, his tone dropping. “We’ve always known that delvers face death again and again.”

  “Well, ‘a lot of us’ is not the same as an exact number, is it?” Kur asked, clenching his jaw.

  “What is the number?” Nar asked.

  “Nar—”

  “What is the number?”

  Kur heaved a sigh from the bottom of his soul. “There are many numbers out there, but, according to what I could understand, within five years… odds are that three to four of us will be either dead, or maimed and forced to retire.”

  Thump-tsssss.

  Thump-tsssss.

  Thump…

  “There are outliers of course, but those are outliers,” Kur muttered.

  “Where did you find those numbers?” Nar asked.

  “I was worried, after the illatrian, so I checked and inferred it from Tsurmirel’s databases,” Kur said.

  “A hundred thousand years worth? Across all of Tsurmirel’s delvers? You saw all that?” Nar asked.

  “Don’t be ridiculous! We can’t just access all of that,” Kur said, his tone rising. “But is a thousand years not enough? Is ten million delver records of every possible path not enough?”

  Nar stared, wide eyed at the neon blue and lilac waves crossing the water, the sound of the industrial complex behind them and of the ma’bat cries overhead fading to near silence.

  “This is why I didn’t want to tell you. Any of you!” Kur hissed. “This is why I’m stuck! No matter what I do, no matter what I study, no matter what orders I give, at some point it will happen. It might not be three or four, it might just be one, but it will happen! And there’s nothing I can do to prevent it. If anything, by making it this far from our cubeplant all alive in one piece, we’ve already beaten insurmountable odds. But this… it’s going to happen eventually. This is not one of those cartoons that Viy and Jasphaer love so much. It’s reality! An accident. A mistake… the wrong place at the wrong time, or just sheer, dumb, bad luck. And I-I’m not a god. I can’t stop it. I can’t stop that I will let you all down… Eventually.”

  Pale, Nar reached over and pulled Kur into a tight, one arm embrace, as the party leader’s shoulder shook. At his feet, the waters of the Great Lake continued to gently wash over the dark pebbles in their swirl of neon, bright colors. Just as they had for Crystal knew how long, and just as they would for an equal incomprehensible amount of time, until the Brightnight died and was forgotten in the endless march of time.

  Nar’s thoughts formed and broke apart, words came to him and were discarded, for what can one say against the realization of such truths. Of the realization of your own insignificance?

  He was blocked from returning for his dad because he was a nobody. A weak nobody. And Kur was stumped against the reality he had discovered because he was just a sapient in a Creation that went much beyond his comprehension and capabilities to defy.

  Three to four of us, Nar thought, his mind eventually settling on those numbers. Within five years. Killed or maimed… I guess it’s like Jasphaer said, some things you can’t just heal.

  “I’m sorry,” Kur said, straightening back up. “It’s bad enough that I told Gad, to tell you as well was—Ow!”

  Nar pressed his fist against Kur’s arm.

  “We’re together in this, and in everything,” Nar said.

  “And what, are you going to tell me that now we need to be strong enough to alter reality too?” Kur asked him.

  “Don’t be crazy. We just need to beat the odds, right?” Nar said.

  “And how in the Pile are we going to do that?” Kur shouted. “Didn’t you hear what I—”

  “Then, if you don’t do anything, will people not die?”

  “Ugh!” Kur said, scratching at the back of his neck. “That’s what Gad said too, but—”

  “When I left the cubeplant, I fully expected to fail,” Nar said. “I was going to die on the Climb, and meet my dad again in the Waiting Dark. Those were the odds of failure… but if I didn’t Climb, they would become a certainty.”

  Nar reached down and picked up a pebble, examining its smooth darkness.

  “Even now what are the odds of making it as a Named Few? What are the odds of Gad making it through her one hundred year contract? Of us surviving our apprenticeship?” Nar asked, eyeing the pebble. “People have died already, haven’t they? And some people have given up too… Is that what you’re suggesting, that we give up?”

  “That’s—”

  “We had time to give up, to leave the Scimitar, but we can’t anymore. And if you’re so worried, why didn’t you try to get us out of the Crystal’s Mercy when Leon offered to? Or why did you volunteer us to clear this nightmare?” Nar asked, his eyes still fixed on the pebble in his hand.

  “Those are just things we have to do… and giving up means we return to the Nexus as weaklings,” Kur muttered. “Where we won’t survive.”

  “And what are the odds of that?” Nar asked softly.

  “You’re saying that we just have to do what we have to do, and deal with whatever happens?” Kur asked. “This isn’t just some whimsical thing we can toughen out! This is practically a law of Creation! You might as well ask me which one of us I want to see dead!”

  “And giving up will help us how?”

  “Then, have you given up your dad, or not?” Kur asked. “Are you going to fight that law or—”

  BANG!

  Kur jumped at the lound, gunshot like snap, and Nar unfurled his fingers to let the crushed remains of the pebble fall.

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that,” Kur said, avoiding the darkness that took Nar’s eyes.

  “No, it was fair,” Nar said, eyeing the destroyed pieces at his side.

  “Nar, we—”

  “I don’t have an answer,” Nar said. “And in saying that, it’s probably wrong of me to tell you to not just lay down and give up. Is defying the Radiants harder than defying your absolute statistics? Maybe. Maybe not. But whatever the outcome, haven’t we always made our own fate?”

  Kur pulled his legs to his chest and leaned over his knees, staring down at the countless pebbles under him.

  “Are you telling me that, or yourself?” Kur asked.

  “We’re still talking about you,” Nar whispered.

  “I-I don’t know, Nar,” Kur said. “I hear the logic in your and Gad’s words, even my instructor, but…”

  Nar patted his back. “I wasn’t trying to fix it. In the end, this is something that only you can answer.”

  “And your dad?” Kur asked, turning his head to stare at Nar.

  “Well… that’s something only I can answer, isn’t it?” Nar said.

  There was no way to tell what was going on behind Nar’s dark stare as he gazed out into the horizon, across the lake, to where the dim, grim shapes of the Gloom’s decaying jungle awaited them.

  By all rights, I should expect him to tell me he’s given up, Kur thought. God’s promise or not, even were it to be true, could one God go against the will of twenty-three others? No, the logical thing, the obvious decision, is to give up. It’s just not possible… But with Nar, why do I think that logic does not apply? Why is the thought of him rising up against the Gods, to get his away, not make me laugh for being absurd?

  Kur looked down at the crushed broken pebble.

  And what am I going to do? There’s nothing I can do, no matter how much I struggle. And to order the party to their inevitable deaths is…

  He took a deep breath and rose to his feet.

  “Come on, we’ve been here long enough,” he told Nar, as he glanced towards the foot of the waterfall. “We’ve got a nightmare to slay.”