Gabby’s horse was as fine an example of the species as my poor pony was not. It was tall, powerful, and more than capable of carrying Gabby, Max and me as far as we wanted to go. But it was also snooty and stubborn, and took to me like a pixie to a family of goblins. Which is to say, not well at all.

Gabby flowed smoothly into the saddle like she was born to it. But when I approached, the horse looked me over, shook its head with a whinny, and stepped sideways to keep me away.

I tried again. Same result. Perhaps it was the stink of goblin gore I still carried.

“Your horse doesn’t like me,” I said, still trying to get close. We were doing a peculiar dance, with the horse keeping two steps away no matter what I tried.

“He’s got good taste,” she returned.

“Get on with it!” said Max. He was still watching the floating mountain approach. I’d never met a more nervous pixie. If it wasn’t goblins he was worried about, it was something else. But he did have a point. The Demesne was large enough that it would take some time to ride out of its way.

Gabby reached down and patted the horse affectionately on the neck. “Easy boy. We may not like him, but he’s coming with us. Let him on.”

It did the trick. The horse stamped its feet and eyed me with distrust. But it stood in one place long enough for me to grab the back of the saddle and haul myself awkwardly up. I sat bareback, behind Gabby.

I placed my hands on her hips and she turned around with a glare. “Don’t get any ideas,” she said.

Even though my cheeks hurt as much as everything else, I grinned my usual grin. “What? You don’t want me to fall off, do you?” I didn’t move my hands.

“Maybe I do,” she replied.

“Come on,” said Max as he landed on my shoulder. “Time to go!”

“Which way?”

“I jus’ wanna get back to Ulm,” Max said.

“We can’t,” I said reasonably. “Not with the Demesne coming from that way. And anyway, what’s left for you there?” Then I added brightly, “I know! Gabby, where did you say the Fracture was?”

“I didn’t.” She nudged the horse into a canter and I nearly lost my balance.

She failed to clarify if we were heading towards the Fracture or not, and we rode until we were safe from any possible Demesne-related incident.

After a while, tussocks were replaced by greener grasses and the thorny shrubs gave way to larger bushes. Eventually we found ourselves in a pleasant area with a few larger trees and a small stream babbling beside us.

Gabby reined in. “We’ll stop here for the night. Unless anyone objects?”

I thought I heard Max mutter something about needing a drink, but he didn’t say anything loud enough for me or Gabby to consider it an objection. As for me, I’d spent the past couple of days getting beaten up and I’d been exhausted since before our little adventure with the goblins. Now I was totally spent. I barely had the energy to slide from the horse.

“This isn’t still goblin country, is it?” I asked Max.

Startled, the pixie looked hastily about. “Don’t think so,” he said. He relaxed somewhat. “Can’t really tell, though. Nasty buggers. Likely to pop up anywhere.”

Good enough, I thought. I helped Gabby gather wood for a fire and then hauled myself over to the stream, stripped off my tunic, trousers and armor, and did my best to wash as much of the grime and gore away as I could.

It was interesting to note that my torso and legs weren’t so much covered by bruises as they were covered by a single bruise that extended all over, varying only in the specific hue. Here and there, that bruise was broken by a graze or cut, but most of them were minor and had already scabbed over.

I’d been lucky, I thought. It could have been considerably worse.

My tunic and trousers hadn’t fared so well. Both were dirty, singed, cut, and covered in so much goblin blood that it was hard to tell what color they had been. But I didn’t have anything else, so I washed them as best as I could, then turned to my armor.

A few of the scales were out of place and one or two had been dented, but it was the best armor I’d ever owned. It had survived the day’s adventures as well as I had. I scrubbed it with a handful of dry grass to get rid of the blood and put everything back on, still wet, before rejoining the others.

Gabby’s horse was unsaddled and tethered close enough to the stream so that it could drink if it wanted. It was contentedly pulling up big mouthfuls of grass and eyeing me carefully as I wandered by. Max had perched himself on its back and Gabby had got the fire going and was roasting a portion of meat on a stick.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“There’s bread if you want it,” she said without looking my way. She must have brought it and the meat along, tucked in her saddlebags.

I gratefully ripped off a chunk and sat with my back against the stump of a tree to eat.

For a while I said nothing. I just watched the Demesne as it floated not far from where we were and directly above where we had been. From that angle, with the fading sun reflecting off the golden towers, it looked as majestic as I’d ever thought it had been when I was younger. It looked like it had stopped, I thought.

It had been known to do so every now and then, though why, nobody I’d ever met could guess. Perhaps the Shadow was enjoying the view. Perhaps he was looking for something. Or perhaps something had gone wrong with the machinery or magics that kept it on the move, and it would remain stopped until it could be fixed.

I wondered briefly what it would be like to look at the world from such lofty heights, then put the thought out of my mind. I’d never know, I thought, and transferred my gaze to Gabby, only to find her looking right back at me.

For a moment, we just looked at each other. Then she lowered her eyes and stared into the fire, acting as if I didn’t exist and that she’d never so much as glanced in my direction.

I couldn’t figure her out. I understood that she blamed me for the loss of her crystal ball and the tavern, but surely she understood that it wasn’t my fault. Or at least that I didn’t do it on purpose. And was she attracted to me or not? Sometimes it seemed she was, and sometimes it seemed that she loathed me more than anything else in the world. And sometimes it seemed both were true at once.

As for me, there was no doubt. I found her powerfully attractive. But then, with the way she looked and held herself, I suspected everything in all the land that was vaguely male (and in a lot of cases even if not) would have been attracted to her. I was just fortunate enough to be the only one close enough to do anything about it.

Not counting Max, of course. Human-pixie relationships were not entirely unheard of, but they could be, um, logistically difficult. You know, because of the size difference and all. If you get my meaning. Oh, and there was the horse as well, but let’s face it: a horse is a horse, and therefore not much competition.

As far as I knew, I was the only adult human male around, and that, I figured, ought to give me a certain advantage. If I chose to do anything about it.

Once more, I tried out my grin. “Hey, Gabby,” I started, but that was as far as I got.

“How many times must I tell you? My name is Gabriella,” she returned, her eyes flashing anger.

Good start, I thought. I tried again. “My humblest apologies,” I said. “To sully such a name as yours with an abbreviation is indeed a crime. Gabriella. I will not forget again.”

It seemed to mollify her. “Tell me, Gabriella, how did you find me?”

She snorted, not looking at me, and checked the meat to see if it was done. She took a delicate bite and chewed thoughtfully. I started to wonder if she was going to answer, but before I could think of something else to say, she did. “I’m a Seer, with or without my crystal ball. I get visions sometimes. More often when I’m angry or upset. I saw where you would be and decided to hunt you down.” She took another bite.

“Why?”

“Why do you think?” she said, glaring at me. “To stick a dagger in your gizzard. And if you give me a reason, I might still do so.”

I was just happy she was looking my way. “Do you often run off on missions of vengeance? Especially when the people you’re after didn’t actually do anything to deserve it?”

“I….” she began, but then she stopped. She frowned and bit her lip as if she didn’t know quite what to say. “No. Not usually.”

“Then why did you chase after me?”

I thought I saw her blush. Then she shook her head and glared at me some more. “I saw what I saw, and others have confirmed it. You may not have broken my crystal ball, but you started that fire. Somehow.”

“Yeah. Sure. By breathing a tongue of flame at the guards in exactly the same way I didn’t breathe a tongue of fire at the goblins. Here’s a question: just how many people do you know who can do that, and then choose not to when their life is in danger?”

“How many have a tail, or pointy teeth, or eyes with pupils like yours?” she returned.

She had a point, but I was also surprised she’d noticed. Not the tail; that had been out for all the world to see. But the teeth? The eyes? You have to be paying attention to spot those.

“None that I know of,” I said.

Both of us were quiet for a time. Gabby chewed her meat thoughtfully. I thought I heard Max’s light snores over the occasional crackling of the fire.

“So what are you, anyway?” she asked.

“What are you?” I retorted. “Your skin isn’t normal and you’re quite a bit stronger than you should be. I’m guessing part orc?”

She looked away and shifted as if the question made her uncomfortable, but she didn’t answer.

I took her silence as confirmation. After a while I said, “I don’t know. Mostly human, I guess. As you say, I’ve never met anyone like me, and there’s no-one to ask. I’m not, as far as I know, a demon.” I paused, then decided to forge ahead. “That’s why I’m after the Fracture.”

“The Fracture doesn’t answer questions. It’s just a window through time—”

“—and if I look back through my past to before I was born, I ought to stumble across a few clues,” I finished.

She mulled it over. “That could work,” she admitted.

I had a thought. “But then, maybe I don’t need the Fracture. You said you have visions?”

“It doesn’t work like that. My visions aren’t predictable. That’s why I needed my crystal ball, so I could See whenever I needed to. And even then, I could glimpse only fragments of what might happen, not what has happened. Only the Fracture can do what you need.” She paused briefly. “The Fracture is much more powerful than a simple crystal ball. Not only can you see time in any direction, you can also see every possible future that might ever happen, all at once. And you can choose to act in ways to make one more likely than the others.” Her eyes turned hard. “It’s dangerous. You could use it to do almost anything. That’s why I didn’t tell you where it was.”

She had a point. I was already wondering if it could be used to get rich, become a king, or maybe displace the Shadow himself. But I wasn’t going to say any of that to her.

“I’d never misuse it,” I lied. “I just want to know who I am.” I waited, but she didn’t say anything else. So I pushed her. “Will you tell me where I can find it?”

She ignored my question. “We should keep a watch,” she said. “The goblins might come back, and who knows what else is out there? I’ll go first.” And that, apparently, was the end of the conversation.

Except that there was one more thing I wanted to know. “What did you use to chase the goblins away?”

She smiled, but it was a nasty sort of smile. “That’s my secret,” she said. “Now go to sleep.”

She showed no inclination to continue what we started before the Demesne had interrupted us. I sighed and decided there would be other opportunities.

Moments later, I was asleep.