‘I woke up six weeks later, in the barracks back on our side of no man’s land. Apparently I’d been found unconscious in the room where I’d killed the mage.’ Cam continued telling his story. ‘They’d diagnosed me as having a broken mind; quite commonly seen from those that fight with telepaths; I’m sure the Mollusca regularly cause the same damage to their victims. The Enemy doesn’t have Mollusca though, and they don’t have many other telepaths, so we don’t regularly see it ourselves.

‘They actually got a Mollusca in to look at me, but it claimed that while it could cause the kind of telepathic damage it was seeing, it didn’t know how to fix it.

‘So they were surprised when I woke up.’

They were sat on the front of the wagon again, now an hour or so away from where they’d seen the Burner stag. The horse was dutifully trotting away, a dainty little movement that belied how fast they were actually moving. Cam had spent the whole ride since the Burner explaining how he’d ended up where he was, and why it had led to him forcing Ted to fight a magical poison deer. It had been enlightening, but concerning; another shock of reality in this unreal world, another reminder that this wasn’t just the worst lads trip in the world, with the last lads in the world he’d ever want to go with. It was an actual war, with fighting and blood and death and trauma. With bears and lizards and spider people and slugs.

He still wanted to get to the bottom of a whole range of things, including ‘death’, but for now, he wanted to hear the rest of Cam’s story.

‘And your mind wasn’t broken?’ he asked, prompting Cam to continue.

‘No, it was.’ Cam said. ‘I struggled to understand things, experienced things too quickly or too slowly, couldn’t line up with the rest of the world. They didn’t work out until after I woke up exactly why. It was the combination of Time magic and the psychic attack that had set me out of sync. At least, it had mentally, but when your mind experiences time slower or faster than your body can react to it it causes more issues than you’d expect; half the time I ended up slapping things off tables when I tried to grab them, or starting the second part of an action having never finished the first.

‘But the worst part was the dreams. I’d started having hyper-realistic dreams, with people I knew, situations I recognised, at least vaguely. Because I was off duty, in recovery, I didn’t know the ins and outs of missions, but it wasn’t long before I started lining up my dreams with reality; I’d dream a defeat, and it would happen two days later, or I’d dream a friend having an accident and then see him the next day with a broken arm.

‘I told my commander about it; in this world those kinds of things aren’t necessarily a sign of madness. Though they still can be.’ Cam added. ‘So it doesn’t take all the tension and drama away from telling people about your mad dreams, only lessens the risk. Fortunately my second lieutenant believed me, and passed it up the chain to a Captain who decided to test it.

‘They found out two things quite quickly. The first was that my dreams were accurate, and I really was getting glimpses of the future. The second was that there wasn’t anything they could do to change them. If I dreamt they’d win a battle, they’d win; if I dreamt they’d lose, they’d lose. They’d ask me for specifics; who was going to be injured, where would the incursion happen. But no matter what they did to try and change the outcome, they couldn’t, and more often than not, they ended up causing it. I remember once I Saw one section of our outer trenches being rushed by an Enemy battalion; I reported it, and so extra defences were posted there. But I’d not Seen that two other battalions were also attacking from the flanks, and they breached our defences easily because we were centred on the trench that I’d seen. We abandoned the centre to defend the flanks, and ended up losing all three, retreating underground and out of our front trenches…’ Cam’s voice slowly died as he re-lived his experiences. He spoke calmly, with much the same friendly tone that he had used in the first few hours of travelling, but Ted could sense the undercurrent of emotion.

‘The issues started shortly after, as I started getting blamed every time something went wrong. It’s hard for people to understand that they can’t change something if they’ve been warned in advance; even I couldn’t really accept it. I’d tell people that I’d Seen them die, and they’d choose to go anyway…’ Cam’s voice died again.

‘That sounds like absolute shit.’ Ted said, sympathetic. His anger had drained away now, as he started to understand Cam’s point of view. The man had truly bared his soul in order to explain himself, and hard as it was to believe, in this world, everything was hard to believe.

‘It was tough. And eventually the dreams started coming to me during the day and I wasn’t able to concentrate or function; at least, not at the front. How could I go on a mission knowing for a fact that it would fail? That people would die? So, as my mind slowly returned to health, I decided to leave. It wasn’t a path often taken, but I’d made it obvious that I couldn’t be an active member of the military, and I’d do better elsewhere. So they let me. I travelled back to the outpost, discussed my future, took a leave of absence, and ten years later, here I am.’

He finished his story, and for a few seconds they just sat in silence as the wagon rumbled on, Jennie tirelessly plodding on along the wide trail. Cam had raised a lot of questions about this world that Ted was keen to ask about, but that was looking to be a common occurrence. The story of the brutality of war and what Cam had gone through was shocking on a level that Ted could barely comprehend. Trained as a killer, beaten and broken apart on your first real mission, forced to watch visions of your friends dying, and then being blamed for it? No wonder he’d left.

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‘I understand why you left me to fight the deer.’ Ted said. ‘No hard feelings.’

‘Thank you, Ted. I appreciate it. I knew that you would be okay; I just didn’t know that I would be. Of course, nothing I can do would change what was going to happen, but I still try my best to avoid getting involved in things if I’m unsure I can change the outcome.’

‘But you don’t think you can ever change the outcome, because it’s already set.’ Ted countered.

‘That… is true.’ Cam said. ‘It gets complicated. I try to avoid going into it in detail, and if I don’t see myself in a vision, I try to avoid it and view it as if it’s happening far away. It helps deal with some of the tougher questions.’

‘No philosophers here then?’ Ted joked, trying to lighten the mood.

‘Philosophy becomes trickier when you’re receiving orders directly from God.’ Cam said, smiling. ‘Or rather directly through his agents in senior management.’

‘That sounds very similar to how things are on Earth.’ Ted pointed out.

‘True, but on Earth you hadn’t been brought back from the dead.’ Cam retorted.

‘Good point.’ Ted conceded. ‘Helps one side of the argument I guess.’

For a few more minutes they just sat there, Cam minding the reins, Ted looking at the surroundings, which once again had seamlessly changed without him noticing. They’d left the scrubby trees and thinning forest behind and now were in something that looked like marshy lowlands. They were still yet to pass any other travellers, and Ted couldn’t remember seeing any turnings or crossroads. It was like the whole country had one single road, one that no one wanted to use. Maybe they all preferred portals.

‘You really weren’t much of a believer before then?’ Cam asked, breaking the short silence.

‘Not really.’ Ted admitted. ‘I don’t know what it was like where you were from, in your time, but in the UK it felt in general like things like religion were on the decline. Plus, it felt that in my line of work, you couldn’t really strongly believe in God or you’d start struggling to justify what you were doing.’

‘What was your line of work? Normally GateKeepers are bodyguards or from high value security details. I met a Sassar one who claimed to have been their version of a king’s sole sworn protector.’

Ted grimaced. ‘Yeah, I think there’s been a mistake there. I was a thief for most of the past few years.’

Cam took the news in stride, not frowning or looking even slightly disapproving. ‘There are many routes to heaven, and many righteous thieves.’ he said, with the air of quoting scripture, though it was nothing that Ted recognised. ‘I am surprised that you didn’t receive more of a rogue-like Class, based on that though. GateKeeper doesn’t seem to match.’

‘Yeah, funny one.’ Ted said, refusing to elaborate more. ‘I’m starting to think that I missed a serious chunk of my education in these last couple of weeks though. Did you say you were Level 15 in your key Skills before you went to the front?’

‘Well, yes. We weren’t allowed to graduate unless we had at least Level 10 in at least one combat skill and one movement based skill, and preferably one additional Class specific Skill. Is this not the same for you?’

‘My Spear Mastery is Level 7, and that’s only because of the fight with the deer. Before that I was Level 4 I think.’ Ted said. Cam’s mouth dropped, and for the first time he seemed actually shocked.

‘They let you leave Boot Camp with a Level 4 in your primary combat Skill?’ he repeated.

‘Well, yeah. I had a Throwing Weapons Skill too though. And a Technique called Stand Your Ground.’ Ted said, almost defensively.

‘They shouldn’t be letting anyone out into the real world until they are able to defend themselves. If they’re going into a combat role, like you are, your combat Skills should be much higher. This is absolutely disgraceful.’ Cam’s voice was getting louder with an outrage that surprised Ted. ‘I know you had made jokes about the poor quality of your training, but I hadn’t fully taken it seriously. I apologise for the stag incident again; for a fully trained soldier it would have been a minor challenge, but for those with low level combat Skills it would have been a real trial. I am sorry, sincerely. I didn’t know.’

Ted was unsure how to respond to this, as it was effectively Cam calling him useless and apologising for not realising it. To be fair, he had also been slagging off the Basic training, but it was an entirely different thing for Cam to agree.

‘I mean, I did pretty alright in that fight.’ Ted said.

‘You did very well, considering.’ Cam said. ‘But I believe you’ll need significantly more training before you can be of use on the Front. If all of the Training Camps have now reduced their Basic Training to a similar level to Blackmoor, I am concerned for our progress in this war.’

‘In our lessons they said that we were winning; that we’d actually started the invasion into the Enemy’s territory. The Front had moved across the second water barrier from the central continent.’ Ted countered.

‘Maybe.’ Cam said, looking doubtful. ‘I’m not too up to date with troop movements these days, but I’d heard there was still intense fighting on the central continent. The Enemy had been developing clever mana powered machines, similar to the drones or the flying death machines they had on Alma.’

‘Frankly, it wouldn’t surprise me if we’d been taught outdated material.’ Ted said, sighing. ‘You’ve got me worried about everything I’ve learnt.’

‘Well, I can’t tell you about the latest army positions, but if you’re happy to learn, I’m happy to help you out.’ Cam said.

‘I can help turn you into a real soldier.’