Daine's eyes flicked open, and she sat up with an inrush of startled breath. Her hands instinctively reached for her sword before realising she was unarmed, in bed and - perhaps most disconcerting of all - entirely naked.

"Welcome back," came a voice from her left, and she turned, reflexively clutching the thin blanket laid over her to her chest. Donal perched on a stool beside her, a heavy leather-bound book in his lap and his feet up on the edge of her bed.

"What in the name of the Goddess are you doing here?"

"Now, now. I am going to be honest with you, my Lady Darkhelm, but that was not the wholehearted thanks for services rendered I had anticipated. I have had some time to consider how this moment was likely to play out, and, I must tell you, the lack of tearful sobs of appreciation cuts me to the quick."

Daine shuffled uncomfortably, trying to turn to face the man without risking the blanket slipping free. Due to her size and the bed's precariously fragile nature, this was proving to be more difficult than she might have hoped. "What 'services'?" she barked ungraciously, trying to shove his legs off the bed with a kick.

In response, Donal simply stood and began pacing the room, hands clasped behind his back. As she watched him move, Daine thought there was something different about his gait. "Well, carrying your not-insubstantial frame over a league of hostile terrain, in constant readiness for ambush and assault, was hardly the stuff of what dreams are made, I will have you know. Particularly with all the leaking. I had to have my clothes burned. Well, both of our clothes, if truth be told."

A memory of those final moments before losing consciousness swam forward in Daine's mind. She had been in a battle, had she not? A monster—something from the shadow realm, she thought—had needed putting down. There had been fighting and then . . . an explosion. "I was hurt?"

"You were dead," Donal replied, fixing her with a stern expression. "Well, as good as. I understand you are used to throwing yourself into confrontation without a moment's concern for your well-being, my dear, but I must ask you to be a little more circumspect. You are not as young as you once were, and even the Goddess's forbearance has limits. This was a close-run thing at the end."

The unfairness of the charge stung even more colour to Daine's face. "You were the one that barrelled in against that thing without a moment's discussion! I only intervened to help after it defeated you!"

"Well, recollections may vary, of course," Donal said airily, waving arms that, to Daine's perception, were more heavily muscled than they were before. "But my two central points still hold. Firstly, you cannot keep pushing your self-healing Skills to their maximum capacity and expect there to be no consequences. That your body is a patchwork quilt of scars should be telling you that. There will come a time - and not too far in the future, I would hazard - that you will have inflicted so much damage on your body that there will be nothing left for even your legendary endurance to overcome."

More colour came to the Templar Ascendant's cheeks, and she clutched the blanket more tightly. "You saw me naked?"

Donal waved the comment away. "Pretty hard not to when tending to your wounds. Please, believe me when I say it was nothing I had not seen before," he paused at that and cocked his head. "No, to be scrupulously honest, I actually am not sure I have seen someone of your age undressed before. However, the general . . . .biological similarities remain. Largely," he added as an afterthought.

"And the second thing?" Daine said faintly, her mortification almost paralysing her.

"My irritation at your lack of effusive thanks. Not only did I lug you all the way back here, supplementing your dwindling lifeforce for my own, but I then had to oversee further extraordinary interventions to keep you alive and - if that were not enough - offer to stay behind to ensure you did, eventually, wake up from your catastrophic wounds. And, of course, that is before we discuss my irritation at needing to change my Class again in order to provide you with adequate support for what is to come."

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Too many questions suddenly ran through Daine's head at his words, and it took her time to parse all the information. "Stay behind? Do you mean the others have continued on their journey? And without the two of us? How did you allow that? They won't be safe!" And then, as Donal's last few words caught up with her, she added her own afterthought. "You changed your Class again? To support me? For what?"

Donal sighed and drew himself up to his full height. His new full height. Daine could now plainly see the difference in his physicality now. She had known several different iterations of Donal Assay in the short period of their acquaintance. When they had met, he had been Taelsin's spindly, absent-minded Secretary during the events surrounding the West's secession from the Throne. After their forced retreat behind the walls of Swinford, circumstances had required his transition into a Dark Warlord, much to Daine's chagrin. Time and distance, though, had allowed her to recognise that the choices the man had made during the siege of the City, whilst morally questionable, had mainly been necessary. Indeed, she doubted the refugee train would have been as long as it had without Donal's actions.

And then, of course, there had been his most recent iteration as a Frontiersman. Again, the man - if he were truly a 'man' and of that Daine was startling to have doubts - had become precisely what the situation had demanded. It struck Daine, as her embarrassment at her current position began to fade, that - despite his irreverent attitude - if it had not been for Donal's open willingness to change the very nature of his being, it was unlikely any of their recent trials and tribulations would have been successfully negotiated.

That realisation gave her pause.

Daine had been a Knight of the Road for almost forty years. True, her Class had recently evolved, but Templar Ascendant was a logical—if significant—development to an established skillset, not a complete transformation in her essence. True, she was capable of much more now than she had been previously, but it was hardly like she had evolved from a melee fighter into a spell-flinger. Daine was not sure she would be able to shrug off such repeated seismic shifts in ability so easily as this man.

Donal obviously was able to read her frowning expression: "It is not so strange as you might think, my Lady. For sure, the first couple of times that I evolved were pretty disorienting. From memory, the first one was that one moment I was some sort of minor Cleric, and the next, a hulking Barbarian. That was quite a head spin, I will have you know. However, over the years - and there have been far more of those than you will easily credit when gazing at my fresh face and careless demeanour - well, the novelty palls somewhat. Now, it is somewhat akin to finding a forgotten pair of gloves in a chest: a pleasing opportunity to wear something different, yet also pleasingly familiar."

Daine was not so sure about that, but now did not seem like the time to press it. "What are you now?"

"All in good time, my Lady. It may be best, though, for us to take events in order," Donal sat down on the edge of her bed, causing Daine to draw her legs up to her chin. "First things first, you should not worry about the refugees. Whilst we were away, Taelsin went through his own . . . Class Evolution, and - with the support of Souit and his men - has decided to seek to pass through the Bloodspires as soon as possible in order to strike for the safety of one of the coastal Cities."

"But . . ."

"I fully endorse that decision. Nothing matters to me more than the safety of that young man, so if I say this was the most sensible course of action, you will accept that."

Daine did not think much of the high-handed tone there. "But what about the mountain men? We were only able to survive the last assault because you and I were there to defeat the attack. If they're stumbling around in the mountains without us to protect them, it could be carnage. And that is without whatever it was we stumbled on at their camp! If there are more of those shadow creatures, the losses will be catastrophic . . . "

"I do not want to hear more about it, my Lady Darkhelm. Taelsin determined this plan, and I support his thinking. In any event, they all left two days ago, so unless your stolid form has more spiriting capacity than I suspect to be the case, the point is fairly moot. Taelsin's gambit will succeed, or it will not. And there is precious little either of us can do about it in any event. Besides, I rather think that the men of the mountain and the Skuggaseiðr driving them will soon have far more to concern them than a fleeing little refugee train bristling with sharp spears and belligerent intent."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean us, my dear. I rather think their minds are going to be a little more focused on the two terrifyingly overpowered warriors hunting them down and massacring their warbands with extreme prejudice." Daine became aware that Donal's body suddenly shone with a disturbing red aura. "In my experience, the sort of unparalleled slaughter I have planned for the two of us to commit has always concentrated attention wonderfully."