Heror didn’t leave his tent the next day, lest he run into her.

He had gathered his things and returned to camp after barely drying off, and then he lay on his bedroll, unable to sleep. He lay as the sun rose, as it lingered, and as it started to set again. Hours blended together. He tried to drift away.

He almost succeeded in quieting his thoughts and fading off to sleep, when the flap opened in the evening hours, letting in the amber afterglow to mingle with the shadows. He jolted awake and sat up quickly, but his fear subsided when he saw Raldu – not Adjaash – entering the tent.

The old man’s silver-gold hair twitched lightly in the breeze as he shuffled inside, and his violet eyes radiated in the dark. Heror smelled the rich aroma of cooked food. Raldu carried two plates of supper.

“I didn’t see you out in camp today,” Raldu said. “The horses were fed and given water. I figured I’d come check on you. Thought you might be hungry.”

Groggily, Heror sat up in his bedroll and crossed his legs, brown curls half-obstructing his eyes. Raldu sat down across from him and passed him a wooden fork and a plate, stocked with an assortment of rice, poultry, and vegetables. Heror took the fork and plate, and as if on command, his stomach howled. He picked up the fork and started to eat. Raldu eyed him as he did.

“Are you alright?”

Heror took a deep breath. He nodded unconvincingly.

“Just catching up on sleep.”

Raldu gave him a concerned, almost knowing look, then nodded to himself.

“Just as well. I know how long a week it’s been for you.”

Heror said nothing. He scooped a clump of rice with his fork and took a bite. It was warm and soft. He took another scoop, then glanced up at Raldu, who was starting to eat as well.

“You don’t have to eat with me,” Heror said lowly.

“No, I don’t have to,” Raldu offered with a smile. “But I want to.”

“I should be so grateful,” Heror grumbled.

Raldu let out a short, jovial laugh at the sarcastic comment – a reaction that both confused and disarmed Heror somewhat. Heror eyed the man for a moment longer before returning to his meal. It was quiet – save for the hollow clacks of their silverware – and then Raldu spoke again.

“This dish always reminds me,” Raldu reminisced, “of the time I helped bring chickens back from our neighbor village as a child. Well… I don’t know how much I helped at all. Really, I think it was the day I realized I would never be a farmer…”

Heror acknowledged Raldu with a curious look – eager for any kind of distraction. Raldu saw the interest. He continued, a smile already forming on his face.

“Yes, it was one of the tamer visits to the village,” Raldu went on – his rich, excited voice filling the tent. “I must’ve been around fifteen years old. It was ages ago, but I’ll always remember it. We were bringing peat and fish in exchange for livestock. And this was just after I’d helped the townsmen finish building a new coop for the chicken. It was on a drier plot of land just outside the swamps, and it would give them enough to graze while they produced eggs.

“We were ready to take on some of the red junglefowl that our neighbor village had in stock, and one of the townsmen brought watermelon from the northern canyons – not far from where we are right now – as a treat, to help win the chickens’ favor. You’ve never had watermelon from the northern canyons?”

Heror shook his head, taking another bite of the rice. Raldu’s eyes widened in retrospective wonder, and he marveled.

“Oh, it might be the sweetest tasting thing that grows from the Aelyum. Ardysan pepons come close, but this canyon melon… it’s rich, succulent, a brilliant golden-yellow. In Ghiovan, Tephire, and Hithain – where it’s a rarer commodity – the elsish folk sometimes call it ‘godfruit’, because it looks and tastes exactly like you’d imagine solid ichor might. To paint the scene more simply for you… it is delectable – and I didn’t really want to share it.”

The pace of Raldu’s voice quickened. Its tenor rose with excitement. He set his plate down, moving his hands as he talked. Heror smiled small as he listened.

“The townsman who brought it from the northern canyons cut and cubed the melon, and placed it in a sealed wooden box, with a spoon inside. I would try to sneak one or two cubes out for myself, but he would scold me. He said it was for the chickens first. If there were any left, I could have some. I wasn’t very optimistic. They usually ate everything we gave them. But I acquiesced… for now.

“We arrived at our neighbor village and went to the farms. And Heror, when I tell you they could smell it… the moment I walked inside the coop carrying the closed box – mind you – I had at least two dozen chickens and hens and roosters swarming at my feet, clucking and cackling away, and pecking at each other for positioning…”

Heror let out a snort of a laugh through bites.

“And of course the townsmen tell me to open the box and dish the melon to the livestock,” Raldu went on. “So with the most solemn expression… like I’m giving away a piece of my own soul… I open the box and toss the cubes with the spoon – one by one – into this sea of angry feathers. It’s a painful experience, but it’s over soon… and so while the others are talking, I take the empty box behind the horse stables and sit on a small hay bale. All I have left is the smell. So I open the box, to catch one last waft of paradise… but there is one more piece of melon that I hadn’t seen.

“For a moment, I’m stunned – astounded. And then I pick up the golden melon piece with the care of a diamond. I’m inspecting it, to make sure it’s real, and not a figment of my yearning imagination – when I hear this sound… a kind of ‘huff’ in front of me. I look up, sitting on the hay bale in the corner of the fenced area, blocked in by the stables… and I am surrounded by at least a half-dozen chickens, all of their beady eyes fixated on the little cube of melon in my hand.”

Heror gasped and smirked. Raldu continued, his smile widening.

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“It’s a standoff. A shakedown!” Raldu exclaimed. “And they may as well have been stealing gold from me, because I wasn’t just about to give this away. I had originally wanted to take my time and savor it. But desperate measures were needed… and so I popped the last melon cube in my mouth and ate it in one gulp. And at that moment… the chickens pounced.”

“They attacked you?” Heror asked with a chuckle.

“Chased me right back out into the pen,” Raldu replied with a nod and a smirk. “Broke a fence post trying to escape. We left that day with a few more peck marks than we expected… and without the favor of the chickens. But I still won… because I got what was mine.”

Heror let out another chuckle, and for a moment, they shared a smile. But the mood lift was short-lived. It wasn’t long before a solemn expression sunk back onto Heror’s face. He picked at his chicken as it grew colder. His eyelids began to droop. Raldu let out a short sigh.

“Heror… are you sure you’re alright?”

Heror ate a small strip of chicken. He picked at the food again, spreading a thin blanket of rice across his plate.

“I’m fine,” Heror said before a pause, then continued quietly: “I’m just… not sure I belong here…”

“Why the sudden change of heart?” Raldu inquired.

Heror said nothing.

“You want to try and find your family again?” Raldu assumed.

Still, Heror said nothing, but he did not refute the claim. In truth, Heror wanted to stay. He knew why he was here. He wanted to fight against the oppression he’d seen all too closely growing up. Thaeolai and Ucankacei were still in the back of his mind. But he didn’t know where things stood with Adjaash. Without Adjaash, there was a cloud over all of it. And it was making him question everything.

“As I told you when we first met,” Raldu reminded him. “I’d be willing to help you make the trek across the desert, now that you’ve helped me. You have a horse now. I could give you supplies. It’d still be a dangerous journey, and one I’d caution you from making alone. But I also know how capable you are.”

Heror still said nothing. Raldu could tell his thoughts were running again.

“I know Adjaash would be sad to see you go,” the old man commented, testing the waters. “She seems quite fond of you…”

Heror winced at the name. Raldu observed the young man and changed course.

“But if you’re worried about not belonging here, I can assure you that isn’t the case,” Raldu told him. “Maybe it’s because that’s what you’ve been led to believe your whole life. But here, we judge our own on the basis of merits, and nothing else. And you have earned your place. Not only that, but you understand what the Midans have gone through for generations. You lived it yourself. You understand their fight better than most. You understand that–”

“… that you need revenge,” Heror interrupted. “As much as I might understand what the Midans have gone through, I can never truly share that need for revenge. It’s not what I left Ardys for. I left to find my family.”

“It’s not just about revenge, Heror,” Raldu corrected with a shake of his head. “It’s about making sure that this kind of injustice never happens again, to any people or any creed.”

Raldu paused. Now his face lowered. Shade ran across his eyes.

“For some men… blood is a debt to pay.”

Heror was silent. Raldu lifted his eyes again and went on.

“Brocus told me about the labyrinth that preceded the Sword. He told me about the messages left by Caitan Jurund IV ahead of its entrance, and the sigils of necromancy. Brocus had no documents on such a structure. There were no ancient Pylanthean records on it. But would you like my interpretation on what happened there?”

Heror said nothing, but met Raldu’s gaze as a signal of acknowledgement.

“A King who was not worthy was given the crown by birthright,” Raldu surmised. “And with an ego baked in royal blood, he deemed his will impregnable. He used the Sword of Sparhh as his symbol of divine providence. A Kingdom decayed under his unworthy rule, and he came to madness against the criticism. He drove the Kingdom into ruin. He killed countless kinsmen in civil wars. He let the oases dry up and the cities grow apart. He erased all traces of his tarnished legacy. And he trapped the souls of his most fervent dissenters in the coiled graveyard, at the foot of the monument to his divinity. This is how Kings doom their kind.”

Raldu rose to a knee and leaned forward toward Heror.

“What about Kcirun Cirei, of Ardys?” the old man continued. “He conscripts thousands of his slaves and laborers to war, while the nobles and high officials and pure-blooded aristocrats sit comfortably in their mansions, with their hearths and their silver dinner plates. Why do you think he’s so comfortable losing his workers? Because he can get more. Because unbeknownst to his loyal subjects, who revel in his divine beauty gifted by Opela, he deals with Cuyasan pirates in the slave trade, like his father did before him – all while fighting face-saving battles against them in the bay.”

Heror blinked. His thoughts went back to Cephragon. On the docks. Workers being thrown into the waters.

“Don’t you see?” Raldu persisted. “It’s all rotten to the core. They’re all hypocrites. And liars. And pillagers. And murderers. And their arrogance and prejudice permeates unto their people. The Kings have been this way for almost the entire 4,000-year history of the Kingdoms. Instruments of rot. All the way to the days before Hiirvanos, when the Kings wielded the Sword of Sparhh itself while culling the Midan ‘heathens’, who only sought a place to live.”

Raldu paused.

“Enough blood has been shed at their hands,” he said of the Kings, “that blood would be their debt to pay a thousand lives over.”

He paused again. He had Heror’s eye and ear.

“They all must fall,” Raldu decried. “The Kings must fall. The divine order must be shifted. These things… they must happen.”

Heror pursed his lips and furrowed his brow, deep in thought. His eyes dropped only for a moment, before they rose to meet Raldu’s again.

“Why do you care so much if I stay or not?” Heror asked. “I’m only one person.”

“What you hear is my passion for the change that must occur,” Raldu said. “Whether you stay or go is still up to you, and I won’t fault you if you choose to leave. But I think you stayed here for so long because you wanted to make a difference. You know more than most how severely such a change is needed. You would be one of my best soldiers. I could use you. And you could be a bridge in Ardys, convincing others to convert. Convincing others to join the cause and eliminate the rot from within.”

Heror was steeped in thought again, and this, Raldu could recognize.

“You needn’t make a decision now,” Raldu assured Heror. “But I want you to have something…”

Raldu stood, and Heror watched as he first removed several large coin purses from a fold in his garment, then set them down by Heror’s bedroll. Each one hit the ground with a thud that surprised Heror. He’d never seen this amount of money before.

“First, your payment for your work so far,” Raldu said. “I think 3,000 Kivs will suffice?”

Then Raldu brought his hands to his belt, and he unsheathed the Sword of Sparhh from his Midan leather sheath – its silver metal and winged blade glinting humbly in the light. Again, Heror found himself transfixed by its design.

“There will be a ceremony tomorrow night,” Raldu told him. “To destroy this Sword once and for all. Before you decide to stay or go… I want you to be the one to present it and cast it into the flame. You were the one who found it. You were the one who brought it back.”

Raldu set the Sword on the ground in front of Heror. Heror’s eyes met his.

“I didn’t feel anything, either,” Raldu muttered.

Now Heror’s eyes went to the Sword.

“Tomorrow at dusk, by the forge,” Raldu told the young man. “Deliver us.”

And then Raldu turned and left.