“You all just died.”

“That’s not-” Marten frowned as he glanced at Jamie, before turning his attention back to Sera. “That’s absurd,” he said instead.

“It’s what happened,” Sera said. “Why would I lie about something this serious?”

“Why would you do half the shit you’ve been pulling off with the civvie these past few days?” Marten replied. “I’m not in the habit of trying to rationalize the minds of idiots.”

Sera resisted the urge to sigh. She doubted that Marten actually thought she was lying, but if he kept on forcefully trying to deny it, they would get nowhere with the discussion.

“You’re not a good liar,” she said, pointing at his hands. “You’re shaking.”

Marten immediately gave her a rude hand gesture in response, though she could tell his attempts to control his tremor weren’t completely successful. Deciding he would get over it on his own time, she turned to Stoney.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“About the fact that we all died and came back to life?” he asked back. He was as stone-faced as his namesake, and though Sera couldn’t decipher his emotions whatsoever, she could only guess at the complex emotional struggle he was having within himself.

“Yes,” Sera replied.

“Well, I think you have no reason to lie to us, and Jamie would have no reason not to speak up even if you were,” he said, giving a casual glance towards Jamie.

The Otherworlder blinked a few times before realizing the implied suggestion was directed towards him.

“Umm,” he said, his eyes flitting around the room. “Well, I mean, I’m not sure if you all died.” He winced as he said it, as if the word itself physically pained him. “To be honest, it just looked like you zoned out or something.”

“See?” Marten said, not even trying to stop the angry desperation from creeping into his voice.

“You all died,” Sera said, shaking her head. “Jamie’s not used to seeing dead people. I am.”

As soon as she said it, she glanced at the Otherworlder in question. He winced at her words, and looked down, as if ashamed by his inexperience, but said nothing. It was a much more subdued expression than her colleague’s was, at the very least, with Marten glaring at her like she’d stepped on his toes and spat in his face.

Accepting him as a lost cause, Sera decided to ignore Marten entirely, turning back to Stoney.

“It’s not just about the other Followers,” Sera said. “I feel like I have more gaps in my memories that shouldn’t be there, though it’s difficult to identify them.”

“But you can still identify them, due to some sort of mental protection given to you as a Follower,” Stoney said. “What of the others?”

“Others?” Sera asked. Though she could guess what Stoney was talking about, she wanted to make sure, on the off-chance that she wouldn’t have to think about her.

“Oren and Lena,” Stoney said. “Have you shared your findings with them?”

Sera tried to hold back a grimace, but from the unimpressed look that Stoney gave her, it didn’t seem to have worked. For a moment, she wanted to steer the conversation away, if only to avoid thinking about Lena again, but she stopped herself. This certainly wasn’t the time nor the place for her first bout of teenage angst. She was a professional. She needed to act like one.

“I only recently figured this out,” she said. “I haven’t seen either of the other Followers since.”

“We already sent Laush out to find Oren,” Stoney replied. “Can you be trusted to find Lena?”

Before Sera could say anything, a loud snapping sound echoed throughout the basement. Sera turned to see Marten glowering angrily at the pipe in his hands, or rather what was left of it after being shattered in his grip. The glowing embers fell on Marten’s bare skin, but he didn’t react to it.

“This is fucking bullshit,” he said. “This isn’t some fucking grand conspiracy. We haven’t stumbled upon some dark secret that the Mediators have been hiding deep in its asshole for centuries. I’m fucking ashamed to work with you fucking idiots.”

“Thank you for sharing your thoughts, Marten,” Stoney said.

“Fuck you, Stoney,” Marten said. “Don’t give me that shit. Am I the only one who hasn’t gone fucking insane, here? Grunt. Back me up on this. You see the obvious answer too, don’t you?”

Tenna, who hadn’t said a word since learning about his own death, gave a start, as if he was surprised that anyone remembered he existed.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand what you’re talking about, sir,” he said, his voice completely neutral if not for the slight tremor it had.

Marten let out a frustrated groan and gripped at his face before throwing the remains of his shattered pipe on the floor.

“Him!” he shouted, pointing his finger towards Jamie. “With all this weird shit that’s happening, how in the fuck do you not immediately suspect a fucking Otherworlder of being responsible for it? Am I going crazy? Did everyone else forget what our literal job is? To kill little fuckers like this one because they pull shit exactly like what’s happening right now.”

“Marten,” Stoney said, his voice low and dangerous as the knife he had pointed at Marten. “Control yourself.”

“It’s okay,” Jamie said, raising his hands as if he were the one with the knife pointed at him. “It’s okay, Stoney. Like I said before, I get how hard it can be to deal with me. I’m not going to kill him.”

Marten glared at him and opened his mouth, as if to yell at Jamie, but he seemed to decide against it, shaking his head and stomping up the stairs with an angry huff.

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—

I didn’t quite know where I was running, but wherever I was going, I wasn’t getting there fast. I was tired, I could barely breathe, and the mud-slick roads made it difficult to run without falling.

I didn’t know what I was doing, if I was being honest with myself. I knew that I was only relying on luck to find Jamie. I knew my running and screaming was pointless, but I couldn’t stop myself from getting up from the floor, ignoring the fact that I was covered in mud and snot.

“Civilian. Has there been a new development with the Otherworlder?”

It was difficult to see who was talking, with the tears in my eyes blurring my vision, but the infuriatingly passive voice was easy enough to identify. I didn’t know if it was luck or misfortune that made him stumble across me so randomly. In either case, I couldn’t say I was happy to see him, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t useful.

“Do you know where Jamie is?” I asked, ignoring how uncomfortably hoarse my voice sounded.

“No,” Oren said.

“You’re lying,” I said, too desperate to believe in anything else. “Take me to him.”

Oren stared at me for a few seconds before turning to the woman behind him.

“I apologise for the detour. We will proceed.”

I moved without thinking, lunging forward to grab Oren. He didn’t bother to dodge me, simply standing as I collapsed onto him in a clumsy grapple as I desperately clung onto him.

“If you do not let go of me, I will remove you by force,” he said, sounding almost bored by his own threat.

It only made me cling to him harder. “You’ll have to kill me,” I said, not caring about how easily those words came out of my mouth.

“That won’t be necessary,” he said, as he slipped his hand in between my fingers. Though I tried to clamp down even harder against him, he easily pried my hands away from him with no visible effort on his part. “It was a foolish effort on my part to try and kill you in the first place, knowing you have the Otherworlder’s protection. Please do not assume that I will repeat my previous actions.”

I dove forwards to try and grab Oren again, but he moved out of my way easily, leaving me off balance and stumbling onto the road.

“Let’s go,” I heard Oren say as I struggled to get up from the ground.

Before I could even look up, they were gone.

I screamed at the direction they had fled, swearing to do horrible things to Oren, until I was sure they were long gone.

If I was being more grateful, I might’ve thanked Oren for accidentally reminding me of something I could do.

I took a deep breath and made a silent prayer to no one in particular, before opening my eyes.

“Save me,” I said.

Nothing happened. I frowned.

“Save me,” I said, a little louder this time, as if the volume of my voice mattered. “Save me!”

Nothing happened.

“Why isn’t it working this time, you shitty god?” I shouted into the night sky. “Save me!”

A blue panel appeared in front of me.

Skill: Valiant White Knight

By partying with your love interest, you unlocked the skill [Valiant White Knight]! Under certain conditions, this skill allows the [HERO] to rush to the side of their bonded party members, protecting them from certain death.

Whenever a bonded party member shouts [Save me] the [HERO] may activate this ability to instantly teleport to the party member’s side.

MP cost: 0

Cooldown: 30 days

I frowned at the familiar panel. While the Guide acknowledged that I had access to a “skill” that could summon Jamie to my side, it didn’t explain why it wasn’t being activated.

The text for ‘protecting them from certain death’ started to pulse slowly with a golden light.

I immediately started to look around for a woodcutting axe or something similar that I could use to activate the conditions that the Guide wanted from me, before the pulsing immediately stopped. Without my conscious input, my eyes moved down to the text at the bottom on the panel.

Cooldown: 30 days (16 days remaining)

It was surprising to see that Jamie had only been in my world for fourteen days, but I tried not to pay attention to that, directing my energy towards glaring at the blue panel instead. Though I wasn’t sure if the Guide could read human expressions, I assumed that it could read the intentions behind them, even if I doubted it could truly understand the emotion that fueled them.

“Don’t give me that shit,” I said out loud, even though I knew it wasn’t necessary. I winced at the sound of the shrill fear that infected my voice, but I pushed on regardless. “Do you seriously expect me to believe that you can only teleport him to me once every thirty days? You’re a god. Bring. Him. To. Me.”

The panel remained, floating silently, the text unchanging. I looked down at the bottom of the panel, hoping that the text detailing the cooldown had somehow disappeared, but it was still there, pulsing with golden light.

I stared at it, willing it to go away, but it didn’t change.

“You want me to help Jamie, right?” I asked, hating how I struggled to speak as I choked on each word. I knew I didn’t actually need to speak, but I couldn’t stop myself. “I know why you asked me for help. It’s because you don’t understand us, isn’t it? You have complete control over our lives and our reality, but when it comes to trying to help Jamie, you’re completely lost aren’t you?”

I watched as the text on the panels slowly dissolved away, not knowing whether my theory was being confirmed or denied, not knowing which option was more terrifying. Though the words had come out of my mouth, I didn’t actually want to think about what it meant, if a god that had complete control over my life, didn’t understand how to rule over it.

As I stared at the blank blue panel that floated in front of me, I tried to make my thoughts match it in kind, not wanting to think about what I had just said.

“If it makes you feel any better, I’m sure you’re trying your best,” I said, almost letting out a hysterical laugh at the idea that I was trying to comfort a god. “But I don’t know if Jamie will be okay. Please. You need to let me talk to him. He needs me.”

The blue panel floated silently in front of me. I stared at it, not able to think of anything else I could possibly do to convince the Guide to let me see Jamie. I didn’t move, I didn’t blink, I didn’t breathe.

A moment passed.

Skill: Valiant White Knight

Cooldown: None

I didn’t know how to react.

“Save me.”

The blue panel was gone. Where it once floated, Jamie blinked a few times in confusion, looking around for a moment before his eyes landed on mine.

Jamie winced at the sound of the drawn out cry that split through the silence of the night. It was a horrible sound, fraught with the wild desperation of a small animal that was desperately clinging onto her last chances at life, struggling with no regard for how badly she was tearing her own flesh and spilling her own blood over the jaws of a beast that had already sunk its teeth into her neck. It was a horrible sound, but I tried to pay it no mind, as Jamie rushed forward towards me.

“Lena?” he said, falling to his knees and putting his hands on my shoulders. “What’s wrong?”

I looked into his eyes.

He looked so sad and scared. It pained me to see him that way. He was a good kid. A normal kid who had gotten unlucky. He didn’t deserve to be jerked around by the world like this. I wanted to reach up and give him a hug, to tell him that everything would be alright, to give him a pillar of support he could actually rely on. With how insane his life had been in the past fourteen days, oh how I knew how desperately he needed one.

I reached up to give him a hug, but fell over as the strength left my body. Jamie caught me easily, and though it hadn’t been intentional, I was grateful for the awkward hug I managed to give him.

He obviously needed it.

“It’s okay, Jamie. I’m here,” I tried to say.

But the loud cries of the dying animal drowned me out. I wasn’t sure if he heard me.