Those who leave have a reason more powerful than the one to stay.

Pre-Fall author

They had checked out of the inn, thanking Jory Welter – apparently not a relative of Tom, despite the name – for the trail food. The weather was much better, and Johanna hoped they would be able to reach their next stop in a reasonable time.

The surprise was that Valentin was there to see them going out. He was in what looked like more relaxed clothes, rather than a guardsman outfit, probably for discretion.

“Checking on you, yes. Lady Rocastle doesn’t want to attract too much attention, and well, Anthony and I don’t get stuck in the manor all the time.”

“So, you escort us?”

“Absolutely not. I’m here taking a day off, enjoying life, that’s all. Although… I have a few questions.”

“About what?” Johanna asked.

“I’ve been trying to guess what things do, based on what you told me to look for. That Armored talent, I can hold for nearly an hour and a quarter.”

Johanna was reminded of how she’d compared herself to Peter, how with three Talents the man seemed to have achieved an endurance similar to a three-Talent archmage would… and that Peter had, back when he had only three unimproved talents. Did the heroic Talents work precisely the same way? Were heroes merely… physical-aspect sorcerers? If saints were operating under the same rules as sorcerers, using the same mana, why not heroes? She replied to the man.

“If you were a sorcerer, that would put you at upper tier 5. But I don’t know if heroes have tiers. Or maybe they have, it’s just nobody records them.”

“How does it work?” Tom asked him, curious.

“It feels like my armor is more. Better. I tried a few things with an old armor, and it is definitively harder to punch or cut through. My normal clothing too. It turns mere cloth into almost studded armor. Yet it doesn’t change the way the cloth or leather feels. It’s… weird.”

“Welcome to my world,” Tom replied, laughing lightly.

“Do you get used to it?” the Guardian asked.

“Mostly. Becomes natural after a while, but if you stop to think about it… although, try to get used to my wife’s fire.”

“Hey,” Johanna said, thumping her fist on Tom’s shoulder.

“Anything else?” Tom asked, ignoring the interruption.

“Found out that my grip is better. I don’t seem to lose my weapon…”

“Unless you deliberately want to lose it,” Tom completed.

“That’s right. You?”

“Same thing. Looks like a real hero thing, and the little guy,” he said, pointing at Peter, “doesn’t have it.”

“Actually, I do.”

“Since when?” Tom asked, taken aback.

“When I’m holding the sword,” Peter replied, pointing at the sword’s handle that came out of his backpack. He had decided to keep the sword hidden rather than have it in a scabbard. It barely fit the backpack, but he just needed to grip it with two fingers, and off it went into his other hand.

“Wait, it does that?” Tom exclaimed.

“Looks like it does two things.”

“Wait, what sword?” Valentin asked.

“Something we found in the ruins, far west, near Valetta. One of the ancient artifacts. Doesn’t the countess have one?” Johanna asked.

“Oh. That old thing? It’s been in the Rocastle family forever. It’s a pair of small steel-like cutters. Like gardening cutters. Anything they cut suddenly flowers within minutes. It’s certainly not a sword.”

“Artifacts come in all shapes,” Johanna said.

“You mean, like Siegebreaker, in the Last War series?”

“Well, yes. It’s in the Warden’s arsenal, but we never saw it.”

“Really?”

“Yea. The army doesn’t bring it out unless necessary, I guess. And I think it was found after the third War of Unification,” Johanna said.

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“The world is strange,” Valentin finally said, shaking his head. “And good luck.”

“Same to you. Laura won’t be there to heal just in case, but try to find if, say, your Armored talent protects you against arrows or something. Although I think Catherine can survive those now, if necessary,” Johanna said.

“Let’s hope she doesn’t need to,” he replied.

They hoisted their backpacks in position and started toward the town gate. Johanna briefly turned, seeing the guardsman head out on his way as well.

Valentin Rosenberg didn’t waste time watching the four enigmatic people depart. Not only would that attract undue attention, but he still had to process the changes in his life they’d wrought.

Being a Hero, almost like the epic novels, was weird. Just like that Disarm thing and its opposite grasp. He’d played games with Anthony on and off for an hour, as his energies recovered from the Armored endurance testing. Just having his fingertips anywhere on the weapon, even touching lightly on the tip of it, and that weapon slipped from his grasp no matter how tightly he held onto it. Even with forewarning.

And Anthony couldn’t grab any weapon from him. In the end, he’d simply held it between two fingers, suspended over the ground, and even the hardest efforts by his colleague couldn’t remove it from those two fingers, even though they held the weapon just barely above the point where it would drop on the ground.

That was almost as frightening as the Disarm Talent proper.

If he had had time, he would have tried with the big man, Tom Milton, since he had the same thing. To see how both aspects interacted.

Armored wasn’t bothering him. But the “Gauge Endurance” Talent definitively did. That hero, Tom Milton, had told him you got used to everything, but having an automatic evaluation of some kind of “power level” for everyone he looked at was proving to be very, very hard to get used to. He supposed it would become second nature, maybe, but…

Valentin blinked, as he watched the mail courier climb on his horse for the twice-weekly run to White Sulfur. Because the horse… registered as kind of weak on that same power sense. About three notches – he was starting to get a good feeling of the relative levels of power people had – under the courier himself.

And that was the very first time he’d seen any animal registering in terms of power. The dogs at the manor didn’t feel like anything. The handful of animals and birds in the town hadn’t either. The oxen parked next to the marketplace as he’d crossed didn’t. But the horse did, somehow.

He turned his head, but the four were gone already. He would have asked the fire sorceress if she knew how and why such a thing could happen. But… he guessed he’d have to figure out what that meant. Maybe the Countess would have an idea.

Johanna was thoughtful as she walked through the streets, the gate close now.

“Thoughts, darling?” Tom asked.

“It’s what Peter said.”

“About?”

“Having the heroic grip when he holds the sword. What… what if those artifacts are simply Talents made form.”

“Uh?” Peter said, inserting himself into the discussion.

“There are several Talents that seem to have two effects. One that requires using the mana that fuels Talents, and one that doesn’t, one that’s always on.”

“Like your fire immunity, you mean,” Peter said.

“Or Tom’s grip. Or Laura’s sense of even a small cut.”

“So, when I’m holding Swordcutter… I have both that active cutting Talent, and the heroic grip that goes with it? That’s it?”

Johanna raised her hand, flexing them with the fingerless gloves she still wore most of the time.

“And those gloves…”

“Thirst,” Peter injected.

“… they have a continuous effect. Like the permanent component of a Talent. Meaning we still don’t know what they do.”

Johanna’s three companions stopped, and she took a single step before doing so.

“What? It seems obvious once you compare effects. Most people don’t use artifacts all the time. But clothing, like those…”

“Maybe it’s all written down in that reference book?” Tom mused.

“It deals with sorcerers. But yea. Good idea. I need to buy a personal copy, a recent one. Maybe there’s a Talent in there that is known to cut thirst, and that will give us an idea of what those actually do.”

As they reached the gate, they were greeted by a familiar sight. A cart with two oxen, and a pair of drivers.

“Hey,” Coby said.

“Working already?”

“Cargo doesn’t move itself. Well, maybe the Ancients could do that, but not today,” the man replied half-laughing.

“We’re heading to Cattlemen Glory. You?” the second former scavenger asked.

“Same.”

“Want a hop?”

“We can probably walk as fast… if not faster,” Johanna said.

“It’s a day of travel. You won’t go further, we’re arriving at nightfall I think, so you won’t be too far ahead. Your choice,” Coby said.

She consulted the rest with a brief look and nodded.

“Okay. We’ll take it.”

“I’m surprised to see you moving,” the driver said, once the walls of White Meadows receded.

“Would have thought you’d stay, like us.”

Johanna had an idea.

“We’re heading out while the weather is not too terrible. And we can handle most threats – I mean you’ve seen us at the Kootenai Gap. Want to join?”

Catherine’s remark about blending with another group was a good suggestion. Even if they were all deserters, after all, a group of six, mainly men, would be quite different than two couples on their own.

The two men exchanged looks.

“You’re heading to the Dakota, right? That’s where the road from Cattlemen Glory goes.”

“Yes.”

“We want to head home, to Yellowstone. Custer is a better way.”

“But the road is longer south, and worse.”

“That’s why we wait for the first caravans in spring. I mean, as you said last time, if they think we might have died, they’re not searching for us as hard as you. Sorry.”

“No, I understand,” Johanna said, shrugging. “Had to offer, though.”

“Nice. As I said, us deserters need to stick together,” Coby said.

“Not too much,” Farnsworth added, laughing.

“Hope you guys make it,” Peter said.

“Same to you. Wherever you are heading to.”

The sun was setting, and shadows lengthening when they spotted the walls of the next town. They managed to cross the gate before it went fully dark.

“There’s an inn just there,” Coby said. “Not as big as White Meadows, but adequate. That’s where we’ll be after we deliver. See you there!”

The four jumped out of the cart.

“See you!” Johanna waved.

“They’re nice,” Laura commented. “To think we feared them when we spotted them at the ruins.”

“We were competitors back then,” Johanna replied. “Now, we’re in the same kind of boat.”

“Not exactly the same,” Tom said.

“True. They don’t have our problems,” Johanna said.

She looked at the inn’s front and sighed.

“Shall we?” Laura said, pointing toward the inn’s door.