Into the stunned silence following Brin’s outburst, Nana Rette chuckled, again sounding eerily like her chickens.

“The girl’s not wrong.” Nana lifted something from her lap that looked like a cluster of feathers fallen from her hens. She waved them at Danto. “It’s not my place to force you, but refusing a calling from Eve or Lilith either one would be a terribly foolish thing. Still, here’s a small token to aid you until you come to your senses.”

Danto leaned down from his saddle and took the bright-colored objects from Nana Rette. Keeping one, he passed the other forward to Brin, who then passed it along to Galen. Four long, downy feathers, red and yellow, green and blue, had been wound together into a circle and tied with an interlocking twist of black thread.

“Put it in your pocket. Keep it with you.” Nana paused to chuckle once more. “You’ll be hard pressed to lose it, I’ll wager, even if you tried. But that’s a good thing.”

Galen felt nothing from the feathered token that was different from the differences which already haunted him—the sense of watching from the trees, the faint thrum of a heartbeat from the land beneath his horse’s hooves. The feathers were soft as fur beneath his fingertips, but that was only the feathers. Obediently, he tucked the many-colored circle into the pouch on his belt.

“You have time to think about it before we reach Chanford Falls,” Brin grumbled. “You should think about it.”

Galen didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t respond.

I should be excited. This is the big hook into the game’s main story. Into my character becoming powerful.

But he didn’t feel any more excited today than he had yesterday, no matter how many ways he twisted and turned his thinking in an attempt to get there. His family wasn’t real, but he still felt a stifling sense of responsibility to them. Danto wasn’t real, but Galen still felt an even greater responsibility to—for—him.

Maybe he really was just scared. If so, he didn’t know how to stop.

They rode on, closer to Chanford Falls with every heartbeat, and with every heartbeat Galen changed his mind anew about Nana Rette’s offer and Brin’s heated but not unreasonable assertion. How could he turn his back on Lifebringer, if she—they—were as important as it sounded? But how could he turn his back on his family?

Why did any of it matter so much, when this was just supposed to be a game?

Dusk had nearly fallen by the time Chanford Falls appeared to the south. Built on a curving stone bridge over the falls, its alabaster white towers and walls spun up from a persistent cloud of misty spray. The falling sun splashed rosy-gold light across the city’s highest points, casting indigo shadows into the spaces below.

And Galen still didn’t have a single idea what he would do with Nana Rette’s claims or her offer—which had, the more he thought about it, sounded more like a command.

It’s what I’m supposed to do. It’s the whole point of playing a game—leaving behind who you were and becoming something more.

As his horse set its first hoof into Northgate, just before entering Chanford Falls proper, a delicate bell chimed in Galen’s ears.

[You have reached level 3!]

Out of habit more than anything, Galen glanced bottom left. When his character sheet opened, he skimmed it. Then he sat up straighter in his saddle and read more closely.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Aside from the predictable but welcome increase in hit points, the Wrath of Nature ability was now tucked neatly beneath the stats for his spear attack, granting him a spell which allowed him to call on the earth to do damage.

I feel like I know how that works.

But there were other nature-themed spells now, too, and abilities which brought into focus some of the things he’d been half-experiencing since he’d taken the Shining One’s bargain. An ability called Friend of Nature allowed him to communicate in simple terms with plants and animals. Another labeled Spirit of Life actually allowed him to summon one of the mud and twig creatures to offer its assistance to him and his allies. There was even a small heal spell.

His class had changed, too. He was no longer Militia Soldier. He was Spear of the Sisters.

That’s not just a class. That’s a fucking title.

All the excitement Galen had been fighting crackled into his veins, further tempting him to say to hell with his family and follow Nana Rette to Diairm.

Xander had been saying it for years, that everyone could only ever truly be responsible for themselves. Galen wasn’t sure he could ever believe he should walk away from his family entirely. But back before the world ended, he’d enlisted with the Army because he’d believed it could be good for both him and his family.

This current situation wasn’t really any different.

I’ll do it. I’ll go to Diairm. I’ll figure out how to use these powers. I’ll find a way to use them to help my family, too.

Galen didn’t say anything out loud, not yet. Letting the universe know he was hopeful about something felt too risky. Instead, Galen rode the rest of the way to Chanford Falls with giddiness quietly bubbling in his chest.

#

Two women huddled in the furthest corner of the slave pen they could reach. The flat-bottomed boat which held the cage rocked them with its movement, shifting their bodies as they leaned against each other, clasping hands, and dozed. They appeared of a similar age, with fine strands of white just beginning to touch the brassy red hair of the one but not yet the dull brown of the other. They wore similar garb to the other dozen or so captives inside the wooden bars, rough tunics and leggings of cloth made from reeds and nettle, a shade of greenish-gray which under normal circumstances blended well with the swamp in which they dwelled.

Under normal circumstances. When they’d been free.

Ashes bolted from dozing to wide awake. Her pulse thudded against her temples. Immediately, though, she couldn’t remember what had wakened her.

She must have gasped, because Moss’s eyes were open and watching her.

“It’s fine.” Moss’s strong fingers tightened around Ashes’s, but they were cold despite the swamp’s humid warmth. “It will be fine. We’ll get out of here and back home.”

Ever since the slavers had taken Ashes and Moss captive, they’d been moving gradually north, possibly west. In the twenty years since they’d fled Lechat Leriand, Ashes had wondered sometimes about the ominous call she’d felt in her head since the dark ritual on the day of the city’s fall.

The one I was not intended to ignore, certainly not for two decades.

Ashes had wondered if that call would even exist anymore, but she didn’t wonder any longer. The darkness of old raged against the inside of her head more powerfully every day.

Moss read the knowledge from Ashes’s face as easily as if Ashes had simply told her. So when Moss spoke of home, she meant more than simply the southern reaches of the Meres. She meant the place where the nameless darkness which whispered to Ashes could no longer reach her.

Ashes wanted that, too. She was even less sure now than ever that it was what she should want. But that mattered not at all while they were inside this cage, so Ashes merely forced a smile and squeezed back against Moss’s grip.

Dusk approached. A change in seasons was coming, but no cooling of air or water had happened yet. Summer clung to the swamp. The hum of gnats and whine of mosquitoes swarmed in muggy air that stank of unwashed bodies and stagnant water.

“We’ll stop, soon.”

Only for the night, of course. Only until daylight forced its way between the dappled pale and deep green needles and intertwined branches of the conifer varieties which jealously guarded the swamp from the sky.

Ashes blinked against the tickle of gnats attracted to the film of sweat on her face. She’d suffered enough fly bites by now that their stings had settled into an overall itchy prickling of her skin.

She and Moss and a dozen others rode on a small barge, crammed into a cage with hard wood bars as sturdy as any metal. The cage sat in the dead center of the flat boat with its low lip. Two slaves, one each at front and back, worked the poles that steered the craft. A harnessed swamp ox plodded along the floating wooden towpath alongside the barge, guided by a third slave.

The slavers didn’t bother with armor—it would have been impractical here in the swamp.

And entirely unnecessary when you’re just rounding up mostly-unarmed people and cramming them into cages.