CALEN

  Calen could already see splotches of wet pattering down on the lightning-baked mud, the conspicuously scorched ground centered halfway between Mirri and where the Warlord had landed after Emma had gotten the shield working.

  He didn't envy whoever had to dig Mahira's other boot out of that. Just looking at the jutting protrusion of half-charred bone and red-stained flesh cemented into the mud was making him nauseous.

  Sariel was still frozen, holding mana in an outstretched palm, pointed at the archer above the cliff. The feeling seemed mutual, from what Calen could see at this distance.

  Mirri was... doing nothing, outside the occasional blink and the hint of a shiver.

  "Can you," Calen's voice caught. "Can you help my sister up?"

  Mirri didn't move, statue-still. He prodded what he hoped was a kneecap through her muddied skirts, and she finally flinched.

  "No," Mirri snapped down at him, suddenly talkative. "The Warden's last denial was credible because I'm standing here. Your sister has the bestowal, it's believable she would take the risk over that. You're alive because I'm in the way."

  The stark framing of her speech was undercut a bit by the fact that the Warlord had already been hoisted a quarter of the way up the dangling rope at the base of the cliff. Hundreds of feet away. If the silver-eyed cannibal was fast enough to still make good on that promise, they would have already been dead.

  "Help me up then," Calen bargained. "We'll both—"

  "We are not. To move," Mirri bit out. "Not until it's safe."

  Calen swallowed his next argument. There was no talking her out of whatever it was. Em got that sound in her voice too sometimes. Like when he was being annoying right before an important test, or during practice for a tournament match where the scores mattered.

  Or when she challenged an alien warlord to a duel. With no weapon, and an audience that had still been trying to kill them.

  The rope was halfway through being hauled up the cliff when Calen's eyes caught a spike of mana under the archer's tent.

  The projectile was only a third of the way down when Sariel sent a screaming beam of light through it, and carved a curved slice of the cliffside out from under the silk awning to boot. Rock crumbled into a jerky slide, too slow to take the offending party with it.

  One of the pole-bearers *was* caught in the tumble of stone, reaching the ground with a wet thwack that echoed across the grass.

  An entire moment passed without anyone else moving. Two moments.

  Thunder rumbled over the silence, and the rope resumed its steady climb up the cliffside.

  Mahira's spear disappeared too, but Calen never saw the point emerge. The silver shaft was only ever ripped out of the rocky cliffside, used as a handle to drag the hydra carcass away by the skull. Pale scales formed the second rope to be hauled up the sheer rock face, the dead monster's tail the last reptilian feature to disappear over the ledge.

  People started moving again when it was halfway up the cliff.

  Not them. Mirri pressed on Calen's shoulder when he tried to stand, and he didn't have the energy to argue. He also had a feeling that more time for the fresh layers of skin stretching across his back to solidify and thicken would make standing an easier prospect.

  The sound of retching reached his ears when she took a few paces away, causing him to quietly shelve his complaint that she was 'allowed' to move. Vomit was just about the last thing not splattered over the only set of clothing Calen still owned, and her mentor/commander/whatever had just been brutally executed and partially charred.

  Dovin seemed to be the one shouting instructions at the wide end of the valley, but there was a bit of milling going on, leaving the Calen and Mirri to their own devices while the other survivors reorganized themselves.

  No one was visibly moving in the rocky spires at the other end of the pass. The knights creeping along the base of the cliff had long since disappeared, taking Mr. Isaacson with them. Not a single one of them had contributed anything to the fight.

  Calen hadn't either, but he had at least tried.

  Sariel was moving in their direction, until the Seraph stopped short. Some of the rock Mahira had been leaned against was hissing, still cooling under the rain where it had been melted. The Seraph seemed to hold a vigil for almost a full three seconds, before bending down and beginning work at the seared loops of leather affixed to the corpse's wingtips.

  Calen looked away, fighting the roil in his own stomach as Mirri returned to her 'post' beside him. Apparently steel wasn't something you left on bodies for long, on Avarea.

  Emma was wandering over by then, but Mirri didn't yell at her for it. Which was good, because Calen was already gripping the brass disk in his pocket tightly enough that he probably would have split his palm, if she had tried.

  There was mostly-dried blood spilling out from under Em's nose. Her hair was a ragged, soaked tangle with more space between the clumps than clumps themselves. Everything about her was coated in mud, except the rusty stains leaking through the shins and knees of her jeans. And the shield she was half-dragging, seemingly heedless of the way the weight slowed her down.

  But she was alive. She could even walk unassisted, lucky her.

  Calen was still a bit too lightheaded to wrestle Mirri for the right to crawl over to Emma. Gravity alone would beat him in a fight right now.

  "Hey Em," The words came out as a croak, but Calen pushed on. "Have a good match? Looked like that last one was out of your weight class in the bad way, for a change."

  She ignored the joke, and limped dead-eyed over to the ditch to collapse next to him.

  Calen likely didn't look much better. Wondering how much better made him reach up for his own face, and he found a wooden splinter the size of his thumb lodged in his cheek. It was starting to sting as the adrenaline dropped out of his system.

  "Stop." Mirri said, too late as he removed it anyway.

  The wound was already starting to prickle and seal itself. There was barely any blood on Calen's palm when he swiped at his face. The rain would get the rest.

  "S'fine. Thanks for the potion," Calen mumbled, turning away. "Em, talk to me. He get you anywhere?"

  "That's not—"

  Mirri cut herself off and peered intently at Calen's face, stalking around in front of him through ankle-deep water that was starting to flow through the gully. Her eyes flared with a trickle of mana while she stood shivering in the rain.

  Calen did his best to ignore her, but the long, thin snout with laser-focused eyes peering at him made him want to tuck his chin and cover his throat.

  That, and the clawed hand that had drifted closer to the pommel of her knife.

  Nothing was glowing orange yet, but it was hard to avoid eye contact with someone staring at him from that close by. Even her face seemed washed-out, the paleness more readily apparent in the orange splotches at the corner of Mirri's jaw than over the rest of her scales.

  "What just happened?" Emma breathed, interrupting Mirri's apparent trance. "Why... why are we alive? Why did he just... go away?"

  She had slumped down on the bank of the gully beside Calen, hunched over with her arms wrapped around her knees. Her arm had escaped the anchor tying her to the ground, and had the slab of unnaturally clean steel leaned over her head, taking shelter from the rain.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  Words were a good sign. She still had her heels pressed together, but that was fine. Baby steps. Emma's posture might even be an accident, if Calen was willing to lie to himself.

  "The Warden has... bargained for our lives," Mirri spat the last four words over Calen's head like they were poison, back to gazing at the top of the cliff. "We get to go home, and figure out what's next."

  "Home's gone," Emma said dully. "We're here now. Just the two of us."

  That was progress too. Sort of.

  "Yeah, we're gonna need you to do better than that," Calen started, mostly capable of keeping the heat out of his voice. "Starting with telling us what a Warden even is, and ending with directions to wherever has the fewest cannibals and a minimal monster population. The opposite side of the world from wherever that guy lives, ideally."

  Mirri's eyes drifted to the now-bare cliffside, so she knew who Calen meant by 'that guy', at least.

  "Isha will want to tell you what a Warden is herself, it's her favorite speech. And you don't have far to go, you're already there," Someone rumbled from behind Calen. "You. Heat. Now."

  "I'm fine." Mirri briefly snapped, before withering under Dovin's impassive gaze.

  Amber-tinted static danced through a sweeping geometric pattern inside her armor, leaving a lasting glow.

  Calen ignored Emma's steady slide down the shoulder-high slope they were propped against, and the jolt of movement against him when she startled. Her breathing was still steady and even, she had whatever it was under control.

  He just needed to take some of the pressure off her for now, while she stabilized.

  "What do you mean, we're already there?" Calen asked. "We met monsters and cannibals before we met any real people. Somebody just got decapitated to bait the... the whatever that thing is into cooking me by accident."

  Mirri re-stiffened when Calen waved his hand at the Seraph, who seemed to be done looting Mahira's corpse.

  "We're having a bit of a rough patch today," Dovin deadpanned. "Wounded and Arrivals still go on the first wagon to Eastwatch. Not a chance Isha leaves you in this field. Especially not with that."

  The gold dragonborn waved a casual hand towards Emma and her impromptu shelter.

  Calen mentally put Dovin's authority somewhere above Mirri, below a Warden, and equal-ish with the Venatrix. The Seraph seemed to be above either of them, but also wasn't exactly shouting orders. Thankfully.

  Sariel was instead clattering over to them, with the fingers on one hand pinched around the insoles of two conspicuously empty silver boots. They had a second pair of slagged-looking wings thrown over their opposite shoulder, dangling hastily cut leather straps that were the only part of the shining edifice that was still bloodstained.

  The actual metal was only dripping water under the downpour, as the Seraph approached Emma.

  "We'll give it back right away." Calen said quickly. "She just needed—"

  Sariel leaned over, and gently placed the boots atop the tilted surface on Emma's back before straightening to face Dovin.

  Without picking up the shield.

  Neither of them paid Calen any attention, so he shut up and tried to figure out what was happening. Emma seemed resigned to her new job as an armor stand, so long as she could curl up with her head out of the rain, and lean against Calen. Her breathing was steady enough to set a clock against, so she was handling it.

  The wagon Dovin had mentioned was trundling along uneven ground towards them from the wide end of the pass. Just another minute of this, and they would be on their way somewhere. Anywhere but this field sounded like heaven to Calen, right up until he started thinking about the actual possibilities.

  "You can't do that with all of it. The weight will crush her." Dovin snarled at the blank, ovoid visage perched atop the Seraph's neck. "Three is too many. Four was tempting fate, even on that old bird. Are you looking to lose it all?"

  Sariel shook the 'spare' set of wings at Dovin, jangling the partially-melted metal like a set of car keys in front of a baby. The golden dragonborn scowled and waved the Seraph away, keeping his hands away from the steel like he was afraid the Seraph might drop it into his arms.

  "She's light, they both are." Mirri's voice was still shaky, which made sense, given she was still shivering in the rain. "It was how I knew they were Arrivals, she left the ground too easily. She might have been able to use them, without the shield."

  Sariel seemed unmoved by either plea, opting instead to shake out Mahira's partially-melted wing-braces and—

  "Yeah sure, I can help carry this." Calen said, forcing a grin as the weight settled over his shoulders. "Not a big deal, you save our lives, we help you move some heavy stuff out of the rain. Easy. Just let me know where to put it down."

  The weight of the shining silver accoutrements was pressing painfully on the tender flesh of his upper back. The metal was cool against his skin, but not as cool as he would have expected from exposed steel that had spent the last half hour in the rain. A small part of him noted that it might be because most of the nerve endings there had been wiped out of existence five minutes ago, and only just regrown.

  The rest was busy wondering how much of the residual heat was from Sariel's bolts, and how much was from how recently Mahira had been wearing the damn things.

  Comparing clearly-enchanted armor draped over his shoulders to sitting down on a warm toilet seat felt a little blasphemous, given its previous owner's charred corpse was thirty feet away and currently doing its best to get Calen to vomit from the smell, but if the shoe fit—

  "You can't be serious."

  Dovin was still ignoring him as Calen lifted his toes out of the thin layer of water starting to climb the gully. Mirri was back to that washed-out pale stare, directed at him this time. Or maybe at the 'wings' draped over his shoulders.

  Prodding her with questions about her dead mentor seemed like a bad move, so Calen went back to ignoring the look.

  Sariel produced something from in between their smooth, metallic gauntlets with far more dexterity than Calen would have expected.

  Actually, those didn't look like gauntlets at all. They just looked like fingers. There was no cuff, or sleeve, no neckline above the collarbone, just shining metal that flexed and bent like skin under Calen's gaze while Sariel flipped a lopsided plastic disk through the air to Dovin.

  The dragonborn caught it just as Calen recognized the melted remains of his d4 tumbling through the air.

  "That's mine. Was mine," Calen apologized quickly when Dovin turned. "You can keep it, if you want. It's broken now. I guess."

  He didn't really want to give away the stupid piece of plastic, but being at the utter mercy of strangers was all about knowing which fights to pick.

  With Mirri and Dovin both boring holes in Calen's soul with their gazes, and Sariel not particularly looking at anything, giving up the toy seemed like the smart thing to do.

  "He threw it at the Warlord," Mirri's teeth chattered lightly. "Smudged charged paint on it first. Not enough to matter, but it might have been a weapon."

  Dovin tapped the lumpy plastic with a claw, then ran his nail along the edge, shaving a thin strand off the roughest edge of the poorly balanced disk.

  "Weak material. Can't make out the runes, they've melted," He muttered turning to Calen. "How much damage was this supposed to do?"

  'Between one and four' seemed like the kind of answer that would get Calen into a much more useless conversation than the current one, but he was tempted. Even had his mouth half-open, until Emma tugged at his sleeve.

  Being a smartass wasn't going to get them out of the rain any faster.

  "None," Calen admitted. "I was out of rocks. It's just a cheap dice. A toy."

  "See?" The plastic disk tumbled through the air again, landing in Calen's upturned palms as Dovin turned back to the Seraph. "Nothing there. No weapon, no secret power. Nothing that would let him bear it either."

  Sariel took what could only be described as a haughty stance. Crossed arms, weight leaned on a singular leg, shining silver wings lightly spread, head tilted back so their 'chin' jutted out.

  "Training," Mirri whispered, sounding horrified. "That's what training is for."

  "Not you too!" Dovin snarled at her before turning back to the Seraph. "Gods damnit, you can't actually believe—"

  Sariel's wings extended, seeming to fill the entire horizon, blocking Calen's view as they rose. Wind ripped away the rain when the Seraph brought them back down, a sudden howling punctuation that faded immediately afterwards as the silver-coated stranger launched themselves into the air, exiting the conversation.

  Dovin let out a string of curses so vehement that Calen felt Emma flinch where she was leaned up against him.

  Calen's eyes tracked the shining beacon through the air until they spiraled down atop the south tower, alighting gently next to a second figure.

  Another golden-scaled dragonborn. This one had wings.

  And a shining silver shepherd's crook that crackled with mana when Calen squinted, even from all the way down here.

  "Is that your mom?" Calen's question seemed to jolt Mirri out of whatever contemplation she had sunk into as he pointed. "The Warden?"

  The Warden's head twitched, almost imperceptibly, and Calen could have sworn he saw one of her eyes slide over to him for a moment.

  "Yes, that's Isha," Dovin rode over whatever Mirri's reply might have been with a sigh. "I suppose she'll want to see both of you now."

  Emma's grip on Calen's shoulder tightened, and he looked back.

  She was tight-lipped and staring across the grass over his head, still shaking him even after he had turned. He followed her eyes to the trundling wagon, hitched to a deep brown ox that was taller than Calen, and saw the problem.

  The rowdy pack animal was taller than either of them, and had horns to match, but Emma's eyes were locked on the gray-scaled behemoth wrestling with the reins at the front of the wagon.

  "Why is Viran here?" Mirri hissed at Dovin as the wagon finished its journey. The ox had found a particularly crunchy-looking tuft of grass, and was busy cramming its face into the foliage in an attempt to get some around the bit, to the apparent frustration of the driver. "He's supposed to be somewhere safe!"

  The disheveled-looking dragonborn had stopped wrestling with the reins of the cart, and raised his hand to wave, palm out. Squinting revealed no silver dotting his irises. None that Calen could see, anyway.

  "He was, which is why I'm more worried about the dent in his helmet," Dovin grumbled. Louder, he turned to Calen and Emma. "Alright, walking wounded, into the back of the wagon with that steel. Neither of you is going to manage to carry your own bestowal all the way to Eastwatch, and Isha's going to want you two washed up before she sits you down in her office, so you get the first ride."

  Calen's brain itched, and he briefly searched his memory for where he had heard that word, 'bestowal', until his eyes landed on Mirri. She had used the term when she was talking about Emma being safe.

  At the time, he had assumed it was a term for the shield. Something about the metal was important to these people.

  Now, more of the pieces were starting to fall into place, and Calen wasn't sure he liked the picture they were making.

  Or the way Emma's hand had left his shoulder.

  Instead, she had a white-knuckled grip on the rawhide straps affixed to the back of the giant slab of metal she had been entrusted with. Neither Mirri nor Dovin seemed willing to help her lift that, or the boots she was hesitantly grasping for.

  They were just patiently waiting, making no move to offer assistance that might see them touch the metal.

  The silvery steel on Calen's own back felt heavier, when the realization fell on him.

  four-sided die, commonly abbreviated to d4 or referred to as 'caltrops' due to the way the tetrahedron comes to rest point-up, is used to obtain random integers in the range of 1-4.