Will’s overwhelming instinct was to run, but he choked the impulse down.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Will said.

“Unlikely but not impossible,” said Glory. The angel spoke calmly and deliberately, as though trying to avoid spooking a wild animal.

“You’re lying. You’re lying or you’re wrong or you’re lying about being wrong.”

“Maybe,” Glory said. “Maybe I am wrong. You know yourself better than I know you. I apologize.”

Will blinked, taken slightly aback. “You’re not supposed to say that. You’re supposed to…” he trailed off, deflated.

“Argue with you?” Glory asked. “Will, I can see the argument between us you’ve constructed in your head and it won’t do either of us any good to have it.”

“So, that’s it? You were just wrong?” Will asked suspiciously.

“I’m smart enough to admit that I don’t know everything,” Glory said, shrugging.

“And to know when you need to lie to save your ass,” Will countered bitterly.

“This is also an argument that won’t go anywhere,” Glory said. “I gave you my hypothesis, but I can’t make you believe it. I’m sorry it’s not what you wanted to hear.”

The adrenaline pumping through Will’s brain and body told him to fight or flee, ignoring the fact that he had nobody to fight and nowhere to run. “Don’t say things like that,” he said.

“Alright,” said Glory. “We should get out of this old dungeon. Virgil has the worm situation under control.”

“You head back,” said Will. “I think I want to be alone for a bit.”

Glory nodded and vanished into a wall, taking a shortcut through solid ice and stone.

Will sat down cross-legged on a flat, cold stone. He closed his eyes. He wished he was warm, or sitting on something more comfortable than a boulder, or had more time than however long it would take for Glory to start worrying.

What he did have was solitude, which had been a rare commodity in his life lately. He intended to savor it.

Glory appeared from a wall back with the rest of the group, where Virgil and Doctor Bonecrusher were carefully separating the ice worm from the botanist’s aggressive moss.

Virgil had shrunk the worm down to a few feet long, like a particularly rotund snake. It was currently unconscious, which was probably for the best.

With a dagger Doctor Bonecrusher scraped the moss into a large jar, which was mostly full of moss and a few dollops of peanut butter for it to suck nourishment from.

“Where’s Will?” Virgil asked, looking up at Glory.

“He asked for some space,” Glory said.

“For?” Virgil prompted, putting the worm down. It burrowed into the slushy ground, grumbling.

“I’m not at liberty to say,” Glory said coolly.

“He’s jerking off,” Dio ventured. Rex echoed the sentiment with a lewd hand gesture.

Glory shut his eye in apparent frustration. “I’m not telling you what he’s doing. That’s the point of privacy.”

“Definitely jerking off,” Dio repeated. “Back me up here, Virge.”

Virgil looked like he’d been slapped. “I’m not sure—“

“That makes no sense,” Bonecrusher countered. “Why would the satyr bother relieving himself alone when he could have company? Maybe the halfling.” He pointed to Virgil with a foot, causing him to suddenly flush in embarrassed shock.

“You know what, maybe Will does have a point,” Glory said. “You could all stand to keep some questions to—“

“What do I have a point about?” Will asked, surprising Glory and causing the angel to spin around to face him.

“About respecting people’s privacy,” Glory finished, suddenly again calmly polite.

“Ah,” Will said coolly. He looked past Glory, to where everyone else was staring at him.

“Is everyone ready to go?” Will asked. “I’m sick of the cold.”

Skullcrusher needed slightly more help gathering his belongings. As he picked up a few scattered books, he ran a paw through the shredded remains of what had been a tomato plant.

“You gonna miss this place?” Will asked over the gnoll’s shoulder.

“Certainly,” Skullcrusher said, picking up a miraculously-uncrushed tomato and rolling it in one paw. “Though I won’t miss the solitude.”

“I can imagine it’s pretty lonely,” Will said, nodding.

Skullcrusher dropped the tomato, which bounced slightly off the floor. “You have no idea. Working in secrecy was so isolating.”

“What are you planning to do now?” Will asked.

“Once I’m arrested, I plan on breaking out of prison and selling my products and expertise on the black market,” Skullcrusher said proudly.

“Would you like to work with us?” Will asked, aware it was an impulsive thing to offer.

“Saving the world?” Skullcrusher asked. “That won’t serve my new roguish aesthetic.”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Bad guys are always helping heroes save the world from existential destruction,” Will said, again impulsively. “You can hardly rule the world if there’s no world to rule.”

“A not-invalid point,” Skullcrusher said. He turned to Will with a suddenly manic expression. “You like me,” he said, then broke into hysterical laughter.

“Pardon?” Will asked, stepping back slightly.

“You respect me as a peer and empathize with my problems!” Skullcrusher continued, laughing as though this was the funniest thing in the world.

“I don’t see your point,” Will said, suddenly afraid that he’d done something wrong and was being laughed at.

“It’s just nice to be appreciated,” Skullcrusher said, finally and abruptly no longer laughing.

Will changed the subject, still feeling on edge. He idly wondered when he would stop feeling so heavily scrutinized. “Did you eat much of this produce?” He asked. “I can’t imagine why you’d grow it, otherwise.”

“I can’t eat much plant matter unless it’s heavily processed,” Skullcrusher said, dangling a large but now damaged carrot. “I grow mundane plants as control specimens and test subjects. I could grow anything, really, but these remind me of home.”

“You said you grew up on a houseboat?” Will asked.

“Yes!” Skullcrusher said, evidently pleased that Will remembered this detail. “It’s hitched to a chinampa, a floating garden. My family farms fish, but I always liked the garden more, even if I couldn’t eat much of it.”

“That’s incredible!” Will said, brightening. “I actually work with aquaponic systems combining plants and animals to produce food.”

Skullcrusher giggled. “I’m amused by that coincidence.”

The two of them finished gathering all of Skullcrusher’s belongings, which Glory mostly teleported back to the inn. He also teleported everyone to the first room of the dungeon, but admitted that any further was not possible for that many people. Will thought the angel was beginning to look tired, which he was slightly concerned by.

“I’ll be fine with some rest,” Glory whispered in his mind, because of course he could hear what Will was thinking and couldn’t let Will privately speculate on anything ever. “My energy is not inexhaustible. Between Virgil and I we burned through a lot today.”

“You share with Virgil?” Will asked. It took an odd look from Rex to realize he had asked aloud.

“Some of Virgil’s magic comes from himself, but he relies on me for the strongest spells.”

“How are we planning to get back to Wolf’s Whistle?” Dio asked.

The sun was just about past the horizon, bathing the mountains in the last shreds of orange daylight. It was a beautiful view, but not the best time of day to trek through a taiga.

Glory looked uncharacteristically cagey, like he was cheating at some game. “I suppose I could summon the chariot again.”

Virgil made a face. “Do you really want to use it again? I know it’s not—“

“I don’t really want to, but I want you to trek through a boreal forest at night even less. Maybe my father’s not interested in bothering me about it.” Glory said, interrupting Virgil. It sounded to Will like he was mostly trying to convince himself.

Glory snapped his fingers and again the beetle-like chariot appeared, again with zero fanfare. Glory looked at it apprehensively, as though expecting something terrible to happen, but nothing did.

“Okay,” Glory said, clasping his hands together. “Maybe this will work after all.”

Like before, the chariot’s wings folded upwards, revealing an empty hollow where a beetle’s abdomen would be, lined with seats arranged in a divot-like formation. Glory beckoned for everyone to step up into the chariot.

Will thought he saw Glory pick something up, but couldn’t say what it was. The angel turned to face the rest of the party and met Will’s eye. “I’m going to need to rest. Virgil should be able to cover for me if anything comes up. Goodnight, all.”

Glory vanished into the pin Virgil wore. The chariot began plodding along through the snow, apparently unconcerned with such trivialities as visibility or barriers.

The chariot was warmer than the surrounding woods, but not by much; uncomfortably cold as opposed to freezing.

The potion Will had drunk several hours ago was beginning to wear off, and Will learned he’d been relying on that antifreeze effect more than he realized.

Virgil produced several wool blankets using Glory’s wormhole trick, which he wordlessly distributed. The one he handed Will was deep purple with a golden trim, and had a four-petaled flower insignia on each corner, also gold.

“Have I seen this before?” Will asked, inspecting the blanket.

“Not this one specifically, probably,” Virgil said. “Unless you’ve been digging through the basement. This is from when my home was a bed-and-breakfast. Father always insisted on branding for everything.”

“You’re not a fan?” Will asked.

Virgil shrugged. “It’s ancient history. Much of the stuff with that rose on it is packed up, but it’s all over if you really look for it.”

Will held a bunched-up part of the blanket in one hand, squeezing it. “It’s nice. Do you mind if I keep it?”

Virgil looked surprised, but nodded. “Sure, I guess. Better than leaving it in the basement again.”

Will smiled, wrapping the blanket around himself. “Thanks. It’s really so soft, I wish I had one like it sooner.”

“Like when you went off by yourself earlier?” Virgil asked before he could stop himself.

Will looked at the halfling strangely, then nodded. “Now that you mention it, yeah, it would’ve been nice.”

“Oh, good,” Virgil said, unable to formulate a better response. “That wouldn’t have made it too weird?”

“No, actually I think it would’ve been perfect,” Will said.

“It wouldn’t have made you think about me?” Virgil asked.

“Why would I be thinking about you in that situation?” Will asked, suddenly piercingly analytical.

“Oh, well, Glory said—“

“I really don’t want to talk about what Glory said,” Will said with an air of finality. “I just think a blanket like this would be great at muffling sounds.”

“Muffling…?” Virgil asked.

“You know, because I was sitting by myself, screaming.”

“Oh, yes, of course, screaming. Right!” Virgil said, awkwardness shutting off the parts of his brain responsible for social reasoning and language. “Screaming. In the dark. All by yourself. That’s what I thought you were doing.”

“Okay,” said Will. “Glad we cleared that up.”

“Boooooo!” Jeered Dio, who was laying down facing away from Virgil and Will but evidently not ignoring them.

“No commentary, please,” Will said firmly, to which Dio snickered but said nothing.

“Do you do that often?” Virgil asked. “Screaming like that, I mean.”

“When I was a kid, yeah,” Will said. “After a bad day of school or something I’d go to my room and scream into the pillow until my throat hurt.”

“Did it help?” Virgil asked.

“Sometimes,” Will said, shrugging. “This time it did.”

“What made you feel the need to?”

Will looked up, watching the stars twinkle above the treeline. Scattered clouds cut swaths of darkness through the glittering motes of light. “I just felt… overwhelmed. I needed some catharsis. I’m fine. It’s not a big deal. Don’t worry about it.”

Virgil knew this was a lie, and Will knew Virgil knew that. Still, the two of them said nothing as the chariot marched through the cold autumn night.