“You did well. You should be proud of yourself.”

Even as the blaring sirens from the firetrucks and ambulances sounded off in the distance, outside the alley where Malcolm toiled, and people yelled until their voices were hoarse as they tried to find any trace of their loved ones, Ingenga’s words were all Malcolm could hear. He lifted a piece of rubble off of Steve, someone who had become a member of his organization only recently. A part of his stomach lurched at the sight of the dead man, the same way it turned whenever he saw a dead body, but he refused to turn his back on his duties as he freed Steve's corpse from the debris and took a moment to breathe.

“Your sacrifice brought us that much closer to saving humanity,” he mumbled to the fallen Forebear as his back pain began to get the better of him despite his physical combat class, Royal Knight. He had only managed to recover the remains of eleven people who had died in the ritual, and there were still nineteen bodies left to retrieve. Bodies that he needed to recover, transport, honor, bury, and give the dignified ending they deserved as the heroes that they were.

“They were all good men,” he mumbled again, sighing as he wiped his brow. He couldn’t help but think of the conversations he’d shared with Steve. He had been a shell of a man in life, overcome and eaten up by the death of his one true love, but here, in death, he now looked happy, peaceful, content. He had died with purpose.

Steve and the others who had perished had opened the portal, they had stabilized the bridge between the dimensions, they had changed the destination of the bridge as Lady Ingenga had taught them, and they had ensured the path forward for humanity. Their deaths had not been in vain. They would be able to hold their heads high in the afterlife, wherever that may be.

“Were there any survivors?” he heard a voice call from the doorway, the sudden shock of another still living person in the previously long open stretch of death and debris across the dark street nearly caused Malcolm to trip as he quickly turned around, the big toe on his right foot stubbing against a large broken cinder block, forcing him to grit his teeth to not yell out in frustration and pain.

“No. There are several people here, but none survived,” Malcolm solemnly noted, turning to see the woman walking toward him. She was a short, cute redhead wearing the most suburban “I swear I am handy” clothes he’d ever seen. Despite her attempt at appearing rugged, and work friendly, her garb still looked like it was fresh off the shelf and this was the first time she’d ever put the outfit on.

“Are you sure? Were you able to double-check . . . Wait, Malcolm? Malcolm is that you? Oh. Em. Gee!? Malcolm where have you been!? Everyone’s been so worried about you!” the woman began, her voice carrying with it a feeling of concern and worry he didn’t expect from someone he hadn’t seen in years.

“I’ve . . .” Malcolm hesitated as he looked over at Lindsey. He was so used to being the one to initiate, sculpt, and build the conversations he had with people, that he rarely ever needed to come up with excuses on the fly. The sudden need for an impromptu dialogue even after being exhausted from spending all night and all of his mana with the mages that had died, working on the ritual, had left him momentarily frozen as he tried to get his brain to generate a response.

“I understand,” Lindsey said, her hands grabbing his hand as she finished stepping over the broken bricks, cinder blocks, and fallen furniture that now littered the alleyway and squeezing comfortingly. “I wanted to run away too, if I’m being honest. You know Sandra was like my only friend some days . . . but, but I had Kaylee to take care of, mom to look after . . . you know. Life didn’t let me run around.”

The sound of his wife’s name, though it had been years since her death, still made his heart ache and his breath catch. He knew Lindsey hadn’t meant to cause him pain. After all, she had been Sandra’s best friend and a major part of his and Sandra’s life.

Malcolm shook his head and focused on the concerned-looking Lindsey. “Kaylee . . .” Malcolm hesitated for a moment as he recalled what Lindsey had just asked and exactly who Kaylee was. The name sounded familiar, very familiar, but not just because of his past with Sandra and Lindsey. Then it hit him. “Your younger sister is working at the Daedalus guild now, isn’t she?”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“Yeah! She does. How did you know?” Lindsey followed up one question with several more. “Did you bump into her? Are you two still in contact?”

The truth was that he had been watching her, as well as everyone else in the Daedalus guild, from a distance because of Ingenga’s interest in Nick. However, even though these questions were a lot harder than the other one, he already knew how to answer them. It was a subject he was well versed in lying about. More than once did he need an excuse to know how he knew about something he shouldn’t or someone’s activities when the person never mentioned them. It was the nature of his job within the organization.

“Would you believe me if I said that I was at a small cafe the other day, and I saw her walk right past me on the way up the mountain toward the guild? There isn’t anything else up there, so I just took a guess about it,” Malcolm told her.

“You saw her and didn’t even say hello? That’s cold, Malcolm! You know how much she looked up to you when we were kids!” Lindsey laughed for a moment, before pausing. “So, umm . . . are you doing better? Are you seeing someone again? Have you . . .”

“Moved on?” Malcolm finished her question as he shook his head before telling her the truth. “No. There was never anyone on earth that could fill Sandra’s place in my life. Now, I just do what I can to make the world a better place, the way she would have if she were still around. I do what I can to make sure no one else has to go through what I went through,” he said, slipping for a moment into his recruitment spiel for the Forebears of Ingenga.

“I see . . .” Lindsey frowned. “Have you at least seen a therapist or talked to someone about it? I saw one of the head docs at the Association, you know . . . They’re free to anyone who has lost someone in a dungeon or to an outbreak, you know?” she explained, telling him the same thing he’d heard from all of his friends before he found the Forebears.

“I know,” he gave her the warmest smile he could as he turned back to his work. She was clearly going to keep talking, and he was short on time. The last thing he wanted was someone from the authorities to come by, start wondering why so many mages were gathered in one spot yet couldn’t save themselves from a building collapse, and investigate the scene.

“Alright, alright, I can take a hint,” Lindsey, who clearly couldn’t, gave her best awkward chuckle as she came up beside Malcolm and began to assist him with lifting the debris off Steve’s body. “Here, I’ll help you out. We can do this together until my sister and the rest of Daedalus show up for the relief efforts, but after . . . it’d be really nice if we could catch up. I miss you Malcolm. You were a great friend.”

Malcolm took the words in as he quietly continued his work, carefully moving the bodies with the help of Lindsey so he could bury them later, mentally saying a little prayer for each one as he moved them. He only had a few hours to get the bodies ready before the roads would be clear enough of debris for their fake coroner to show up and take them to the morgue.

However, even as he worked, the more he thought about his meeting with Lindsey, the more he kept coming back to one detail, a detail he had overlooked originally because he had wanted to forget his past, but now that it was right in front of him, he couldn’t: “So Kaylee is coming with the Daedalus guild?”

“Yeah, Nick himself will be here. Kaylee said that, before he closed up for the night, he told the guild to get a little rest since he planned on taking part in the clean up until the whole city was back to new,” Lindsey told him, beaming with pride over her sister’s guild leader, like his accomplishments were her own.

“It’d be very interesting to meet him one day,” Malcolm told her as he wiped the sweat off his brow and looked to the next body, his back aching even more than before. Eighteen left to go.

“Oh? Oh, yeah? That . . . That sounds great! I’m sure he could really . . .” Lindsey, overflowing with excitement, stopped short and collected herself. “I’ll be happy to introduce him to you, so long as you agree to catch up with me over coffee. No disappearing act again, okay?”

“Okay,” Malcolm agreed. “One coffee.”

“Deal,” Lindsey smiled, her genuine warmth and concern for others was one of her best attributes and why he had loved the fact Sandra had her in her life. It was also why he felt so guilty about using her, abusing her trust so he could meet Nick.

It felt wrong, dangerous, and like he could potentially blow his cover at any minute if the boy was, as every report on the subject had detailed, capable of seeing through situations, disguises, and people, but he had to do it. His curiosity about the man so favored by fate and Ingenga had grown too great.

You’ll forgive me this one, won’t you? You’ll forgive me this one selfish act? he thought, the words never leaving his lips, as he wasn’t sure if he was asking Ingenga, Sandra, or himself.