“I can’t speak for the two of you.” Danto sat awkwardly in his saddle, clutching at the reins with both hands. But he smiled as he squinted up at the sun. “But I am damned glad to be away from the drudgery that is life under Tender Hent.”

“She’s such a horrible taskmaster?”

“Eh. Not really, no. But being off on an adventure with my friends? That’s a way better deal.”

Friends. Galen wouldn’t have chosen the word himself, but as soon as Danto said it, it felt true. These two were his friends. And they were, by Galen’s personal choosing or not, off on an adventure. His heart lifted a little more.

Sure. Off having fun while your family barely gets by without you there.

Galen’s smile faded.

They insisted I go, he tried to tell the guilt, but it settled into a lump in his throat and refused to budge.

“We should reach Bowtower by day’s end. They have a small inn that will put us up for the night.”

Brin rode along the right side of the road, and Danto and Galen kept pace with her on the left. By mid-morning, the mud had mostly dried into hardened ruts, so they moved onto the road itself, but Brin kept the lead and set the pace.

While they rode, Galen turned his attention, as he had habitually begun to do, to the new sensations he’d started experiencing since their encounter with the Shining One. Without his feet directly on the ground, it was harder to tell while riding. But the earth’s pulse seemed to beat up through his horse’s hooves and vibrate against his thighs where they gripped the saddle. Out in the countryside, away from stone streets and buildings and with grass and trees all around, he even thought for a moment that he could hear—or at least sense in that way that wasn’t quite hearing—a thrum like a heartbeat.

Whenever trees or shrubs grew closer to the road’s edges, Galen felt from them a sense of watching. The sensation wasn’t frightening, particularly. The steady sense of presence was in a way reassuring.

Except he remembered that laugh in his head when he’d asked for help. And he still hadn’t decided exactly what had happened with Danto. And there was, as ever, that lingering sense of unspoken expectation which accompanied the sense of watching.

“Galen?”

Galen blinked and pulled his attention back to the present moment. Danto’s and Brin’s voices had continued around him, rising and falling in a comfortable background patter as the two chatted. Galen turned his head and found Brin looking at him, her eyebrows raised in a way that suggested she’d just asked him a question.

“Sorry. What?”

“Your pops.” Danto spoke up before Brin could. “She was asking how he got leg braces.”

Brin made an annoyed sound in her throat and cast a frown in Danto’s direction.

Danto shrugged. “I mean, she asked more tactfully than that. But that.”

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want.” Brin tipped her head apologetically.

Galen hesitated, but mostly out of habit. Not wanting to talk about it seemed utterly foolish.

Friends. They’re my friends.

Galen’s real-life friendships had been mostly about getting away from the apartment for a few hours. Diving into a D&D session was the chance to escape everything about his bullshit life and be someone else for a while. His best friend Xander’s basement had been the refuge of choice, all through middle and high school.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Then Xander went to college and never looked back. It hurt, how fast they’d lost touch.

“Back when the plague camp was outside Southgate, a few winters ago?” The words felt strange in Galen’s mouth. Imaginary as it was, he’d never told the story out loud before. He was startled at how badly the words to the real story wanted to spill out, too. “He went out with the volunteers to help care for them.”

“And caught the fever himself?” Brin’s frown deepened.

Galen knew what he was supposed to say next. He’d rehearsed the words regarding his real dad for most of his life, once he’d discovered that when people asked how Galen was dealing with things, they wanted permission to move on and not the truth. Resentment was uncomfortable. Justified or not, people would judge you for it.

“It was for a good cause. But then he couldn’t work anymore, and it was just my mom trying to do things alone. They needed me to step up. It’s been hard, but.” Galen shrugged.

Danto nodded, golden curls falling across his furrowed forehead. “That’s a rough state of things, all right. It’s tough being trapped in a situation you can’t do a thing about.”

“No one has to do anything.” Brin made a little frustrated growling sound. “Neither of you have to make yourselves miserable if that’s not what you really want to do.”

Irritation bristled, red-spiked, inside Galen’s head.

“Like it’s that easy?” Danto sounded as irritated as Galen felt. “Not everyone gets to just walk away from their responsibilities and do what they want. Not everyone actually knows what they want, even if they could.”

Brin, still frowning, cast another glance at Galen and then faced forward. Horse hooves thumped on the packed earth of the road as an uncomfortable silence fell.

“I might break free,” Danto ventured after a few moments. “If I could figure out what I’d do instead. I’m not great at much of anything. I can read and write, sure, but that’s boring. I stink with a weapon.”

“You’re not wrong about that.” Brin’s frown eased. “Maybe I can teach you a few things. I get regular training, now.”

“With that bow, too?”

“Yes.” All Brin’s harsh lines smoothed. She sat up straighter in her saddle and fairly glowed with pride.

Danto sat up straighter, too. As he pelted Brin with excited questions, she glanced back toward where Galen rode slightly behind and to the side. Her head tipped, and an unspoken apology curled one corner of her mouth.

Galen’s momentary irritation faded. He let Danto’s bright chatter and the return of Brin’s smiles lull him with a sense of warmth and light as they rode on toward Bowtower.

Bowtower turned out to be a tiny inn and stable alongside a wide grassy area with room for a caravan to stop over. A rickety tower with a single archer kept watch over the road. No one they spoke to that night had heard of any kind of trouble along the road in either direction. When Danto groused about finding no real information, Brin quickly corrected him.

“We’re not looking for trouble. We’re just reporting on travel conditions. We found out they’re favorable, and that’s information of its own.”

Brin hesitated and fixed Danto with a stern look.

“We don’t want to find trouble. Remember? You of all people should be relieved.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means, as you already pointed out, that you can’t use a weapon to save your life.”

As soon as the words left Brin’s mouth, her eyes widened. She cast a horrified look toward Galen.

Danto didn’t seem to notice. “Well, teach me like you said you would. And then I can handle whatever trouble comes at us.”

So it was that the next morning, crouched beside him to avoid smacking her head against the rafters of the attic room they’d been given to lay out their bedrolls for the night, Brin shook Danto awake. Galen cracked open one eye and noted the humid darkness which still filled the cramped room. The lack of light between the drafty log walls suggested dawn hadn’t quite arrived yet.

“Are you coming with us, Galen?” The way Brin said it suggested she wasn’t really asking. With a groan, Galen rolled out of his blankets and followed them down the creaky attic ladder, through the still-sleeping tavern’s common room, and outside.

Dew darkened their boots as Galen and Brin and Danto tromped through wet grass outside Bowtower’s inn. Goosebumps prickled along Galen’s arms in the early morning cool. Dawn remained for the moment a slender golden line on the horizon, providing just enough light to see by.

With reluctance, Galen took up his borrowed spear and joined Danto in standing in front of Brin. For the next quarter hour, she patiently drilled them on using the long, pointed poles to block blows. When she made them set aside the weapons altogether and started teaching them how to read her body’s movements and evade her blows, Danto began to grumble.

“Why are we fussing with this boring stuff?” Danto eventually groused. “I want to know how to make my enemy bleed.”

“Because you can’t make anyone bleed if you’re dead.”

The heat in Brin’s reply was more than it probably needed to be. Galen understood it, of course, but Danto merely stood there for a moment, as shocked as if Brin had physically slapped him.