At Nana’s pronouncement, Galen blinked. He remembered, suddenly, the rumble he’d heard before he’d made it happen himself, and the startled flight of birds it prompted.

“And you, Dannie… Well, you’re more complicated, aren’t you?”

Danto looked toward Nana Rette, but he shook his head. “I don’t have any idea what I am.”

Nana cackled a little at that, but not unkindly. “Poor child. You don’t, do you? But you healed yourself and then the girl—true healing, not a hint of herbs or medicine rituals. Just your knack, the one you think you don’t have.”

Danto’s hand lifted toward his throat. Now that Galen was looking, he noticed the pale pink scar beneath Danto’s fingers.

Healed himself. Galen recalled turning to see Danto stumbling toward him, blood covering the hand he pressed to his throat and that weird black-white aura flaring around him.

That scar hadn’t been there before. Danto had taken an arrow. But he showed no sign of it now, aside from the scar. No more than Brin did of the one which had struck her in the back.

We’d all be dead. Danto saved us.

Or this Lifebringer Nana kept talking about had. But Danto’s aura had looked nothing like the murky blue-green of Galen’s magic. Given Nana’s story this morning, Galen had an inkling where things might be leading.

“All your small miracles.” The laughter fell away from Nana Rette’s voice. She looked solemnly at first Danto and then Galen. “But you have no idea what promise you hold. Do you?”

“Voshell?” Danto’s voice rose and fell, and his brow drew down more seriously than Galen had ever seen. “I’ve been studying in her name, but I didn’t… I didn’t know I could do anything like this.”

Galen remembered Danto’s story about the cat, and he knew Danto wasn’t entirely convinced even himself of what he said.

But then, he doesn’t know the whole story, does he?

Nana Rette grunted. “A touch, perhaps.” She squinted at Danto and shook her head. “Touches of rose and incense, like Voshell. Those are not incompatible—Voshell is a descendent of Lifebringer, after all. Of Eve, anyhow. But there’s more, with you. An emptiness which is yet bright. Have you had a close brush with death, lately?”

She asked like she already knew the answer. Nausea rushed anew into Galen’s throat.

Danto hesitated and then shook his head slowly. “No. I mean, not before this morning.”

“Yes.” Galen blurted out that one word before he could lose his courage.

At the edge of his vision, riding beside him but not quite blocking his view of Danto and Nana Rette, Brin’s face swam just out of focus. He knew she was frowning. He knew she’d wanted him to keep quiet.

It’s too important. I’m sorry, Brin.

Danto and Nana Rette both looked toward Galen.

“That day against the raiders, Danto.” Galen’s throat tightened. He swallowed and pressed on. “After the attack on Gastusad Manor. You died.”

Nana Rette’s head drew back. She blinked but then slowly nodded.

Danto merely stared at Galen. “I was never dead. That was just a dream. I passed out for a bit, but I’m fine.”

“It wasn’t a dream. You died. And it was my fault, and I felt horrible. So I asked the Shining One… whoever it was talking in my head. I asked them to bring you back. And they did.”

Galen blurted the whole thing out, tears springing into his eyes as he spoke. Danto merely kept staring at him.

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“It’s true.” Brin sighed but then sat up straight in her saddle and turned to look at Danto, as well. “It’s all true. You were dead. But then Galen called that snake creature over, and it brought you back.”

“Well.” Nana Rette looked between the three of them, apparently digesting all the things she’d just heard. “That answers many questions. Eve’s gifts are all about abundance and growth and natural life. In dying, though, you visited Lilith’s domain of destruction, of nature tooth and fang, of death. You are most definitely touched, Dannie. And if those touched by Eve are rare, those touched by Lilith are rarer yet. To find the two of you traveling together smacks of the impossible.”

Galen should have been excited. One of the fun things about TTRPGs or video games was learning cool new abilities and figuring out what you could do with them, becoming more powerful and getting to do more difficult things. Mostly, though, he just felt confused and tired. If he was touched by Eve, his character sheet didn’t show it. If he had new powers, he didn’t know how to make them work.

Nothing about the entire Redemption Wars experience was what it should have been. It should have been uncomplicated and straightforward and not loaded with lingering personal baggage and unclear answers.

It’s not really a lot different from real life, honestly.

Danto merely gaped at Galen and Brin. Perhaps sensing that no one was quite ready to hear more of what she had to say right at that moment or to answer questions about their experience, Nana Rette fell into an uncustomary silence.

Beside Nana, Wilm grunted and flicked the reins against the back of his cart horse. “If we push through, we can still make Bowtower by nightfall.”

No one argued with him. Galen faced forward, looking at the road ahead instead of trying to read whatever was in Danto’s mind at the moment.

Late that afternoon, as they pressed on toward Bowtower, clouds appeared in the west, fluffy white pillars rising above the treetops. The air, thick with humidity, grew still and heavy. Before another hour was up, the clouds had darkened and lightning flickered in their depths. A breeze kicked up, welcome but chilling, and thunder rumbled, growing louder. By the time the village’s namesake single tower appeared around a bend, even the cart horse had picked up an anxious pace. The hens fussed and squawked.

The sky opened and poured rain, drenching hair and clothes and running down Galen’s face with so much force that he felt for a moment as if he were drowning.

In the pitch black quiet of the Bowtower inn’s attic that night, with Wilm and Nana Rette tucked into the only actual guest room and the prisoners secured in the cart with the hens and the stabled horses, Galen laid on his back, eyes open despite how terribly tired he was.

“Galen?” Danto’s voice whispered from nearby.

“Yes?”

“Was I really dead?”

“You were.” Galen’s chest tightened. “I’m sorry.”

Sorry I didn’t tell you. Sorry I let you die to begin with.

“Don’t be sorry. Thank you.”

Galen waited for Danto to say more, but he didn’t. Galen couldn’t remember the last time someone had simply thanked him, without any prompting or reluctance or sense that they only said it so he’d keep doing them favors.

The next morning, as they plodded away from Bowtower and ever closer to Chanford Falls, Galen felt even less like himself, even less like this journey was anything resembling normal.

This time tomorrow, I’ll have slept in my own bed, squeezed in with all my sisters and brothers. I’ll be back at the store, running the stupid simulation.

And Brin would be back to her post, and Danto to his novice duties.

“Lifebringer put me into your paths,” Nana Rette abruptly proclaimed, just as if they’d never left off their discussion from the day before. “Life is pattern begotten of chaos and birthed by order. All that’s happened to the two of you, there was a reason for it. You’ll come with me to Diairm. You will tell me all about this encounter with a Shining One and Dannie’s death. And then I’ll teach you whatever this old woman can teach.”

Nana Rette flapped a hand toward Wilm, who had sat up straight and opened his mouth.

“Nothing from you, right now. Whatever needs arranging, it will be arranged. Just because power’s been bestowed, that doesn’t mean it can be controlled.”

“I have to go back to the church.” Danto spoke with obvious reluctance.

Galen understood the feeling. Excitement had lurched into his chest and just as quickly died, as it had all his life. Don’t get excited about opportunities, because those were for other people, never for him. Don’t reach. Don’t hope.

Hope is stupid.

The words came by rote. “I can’t leave my family.”

Nana Rette made a disgusted cackle not unlike her hens. “Church. Family. Children, do you not understand? Lifebringer has laid claim to you, one each to her two faces. No sign so powerful can be ignored.”

“How can you possibly justify it?” Brin interrupted, bristling with such anger that Galen leaned in startlement away from her. “Minding store, playing at novice, when a greater power is calling you to do something else. Both of you, always moaning about how you’re stuck. Well, here’s your chance for change—and you’re both too scared to take it.”

I’m not scared.

Galen ground his teeth together and didn’t shout. The thing was, he was scared. How could he not be, when every single time in his life something he’d wanted had been dangled within his reach, it had been yanked away or warped into something as painful as it was good?