Pearl had her contingent continue towards Badanis. The revelation that loyalty could be bought, rather than earned, had the dragon-lord giddy with excitement. She was very much looking forward to hitting the city and doing a little window shopping.

The aethereal godlike being had not been impressed when Gabriel pointed out that the route march she had them on would likely see the few men she did currently have drop dead from exhaustion, but she eventually relented and allowed her host of “squishy sacks of shit” to set up camp in a copse of trees off the road.

Tents were erected, watches were assigned, and a cooking pot simmered in the centre of the camp. Pearl seemed to remember that she was some kind of leader, and spent the early part of the night wandering from group to group offering words of encouragement and praise. It was not the dragon’s strong suit. Mostly the conversations went something like:

“How are you doing there, mortal?”

“Your majesty?”

“Relax, relax, just checking in on you. I want to show my favourite soldier a bit of love, you know!”

“Bernie? He’s over there.”

“No, I don’t mean Bernie, you plank. I was talking about you, Generic Footman Fourteen! I love all of my devoted followers equally.”

“As much as Bernie?”

“Are you trying to be miserable? Is that what you want?”

“Sorry, my liege. Thank you for honouring us with your presence.”

“That’s more like it. Bloody ungrateful…”

“My apologies.”

“Hey, hey, water under your skin.”

“You mean the bridge?”

“Are you correcting me?”

“No, no, never! I have lots of water under my skin, you’re right. Perhaps too much.”

“Whetever. Just, uh, keep doing a good job, rest up, be your best self, yada yada. Or, you know, I’ll stab you.”

And that was pretty much how the pep talks went for the first portion of the evening.

Eventually Gabriel grew tired of his self-appointed role as mediator, and excused himself. He had someone he needed to see, and he knew he had been delaying the matter.

Vish and Gabriel snuck off to a haphazardly thrown up tent just outside the camp. They carried a bowl of steaming rabbit stew with them. With some shame, Gabriel noticed that his step slowed increasingly the closer he got to the tent. These little meetings often went south.

“Okay, Vish,” Gabriel whispered, “Best behaviour. I mean it – Best. Behaviour. You know things are a little tough for her alright so, I don’t know, pretend you know what sympathy is for a bit, okay?”

“You worry too much; I’m great with people!”

Gabriel just let the silence answer for him.

“Okay, fine. I’ll be,” Vish scoffed, “nice.”

“I suppose that will have to do.”

Gabriel called out, “knock-knock”, and then peeled back the tent flap, holding the stew out like he was warding off the darkness with a torch.

Vish poked his head in, “Heey, crispy Lydia.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Gabriel closed to tent flap.

The mercenary and the mind-mapper looked at one another.

“What?”

“Vish, I am amazed that you still have the capacity to amaze me.”

“That’s great!”

“Not a compliment, Vish.”

“When is amazing ever not a compliment?”

Gabriel decided that would take far too much explaining, and so instead went to the crux of the matter, “You can’t go around calling people crispy!”

“What am I supposed to call her?”

“Lydia! You’re supposed to call her Lydia!”

“But she’s-”

“Are you insane? Genuine question. Really, has your beard grown into that space between your ears?”

“Look, I know Lydia. This Lydia is different.”

“It’s the same person.”

“No, no, no, my aesthetically blind friend. Lydia was a graceful, astonishing woman. She was radiant, strong! She could light up a room with one of her terrifying, yet captivating death stares. This one looks like a dog’s chew toy.”

Privately Gabriel thought that Lydia had always looked like she had been carved by a titanic child, blind in one or both eyes, but what he said was:

“Same. Person.”

“It’s a tent, you idiots. I can hear you,” a voice, raspy from disuse, called from inside.

“Smooth,” Vish whispered.

“Arsehole,” Gabriel snapped back.

With a deep breath, Gabriel plastered a smile on his face and opened the tent again.

“Heey, Lydia, how are you holding up?”

Lydia was propped up on her bedroll and backpack.

“I’ve got one arm, a face and body that have been burnt to shit, and fuck all purpose in life. I’m doing great.”

“See, she’s fiiine,” Vish patted his comrade on the back.

“And imbeciles for company,” the warrior-woman snarled through lips of puckered scar tissue.

“I know he’s a bit much, but Gabriel means well,” the mind-mapper said.

Gabriel shook his head, “We brought you some food. I’ll just put it down over, um…”

The floor was strewn with empty bottles and flagons, soiled clothing stained by seeping wounds, and flaccid pouches that undoubtedly had recently be full of Lydia’s favourite vice, a numbing, mildly hallucinogenic root called Soldier’s Solace.

“… I’ll just hold it, shall I?”

“Not hungry.”

“You should eat, Lydia. You need to regain your strength.”

“For what? So I can play bodyguard to your dragon friend? No thanks.”

“This is temporary.”

Lydia looked up at her former captain through eyelids that must surely bring her agony whenever she blinked, “This isn’t,” she waved her hand over her face.

Lydia was not what one might call a fortunate soul. She had become addicted to the root after aborting a child born by a former soldier companion. His disdain for her after that, and her own complicated reaction to the procedure, sent her berserk on the battlefield, where she failed to follow orders and lost her right arm in a drug fuelled frenzy. A period of unsatisfying work as a mercenary followed, during which she met Gabriel and joined his band as near enough their only protection on the road to Jandrir. It was whilst in Gabriel’s employ that a channeler, a highly capable magic user, engulfed her in flame in the hall of the Order of the Rising Dragon. She had nearly cooked in her armour, and now bore scars all over her body where the flame had ruined her from head to toe, but had not been well-mannered enough to finish the staunch fighter off.

In summary, Lydia had had a bit of a crappy time of it all.

Gabriel squatted on his haunches, “Lydia,” he spilt some of the soup on her lap, “Sorry. Lydia, I know this is awful. It is truly, truly awful. I can’t even begin to imagine how you must be feeling right now.”

“Then why are you still talking?”

“Because your my friend and I want you to know that I’m here for you!”

Lydia tried to smirk, and winced.

“Look, Gabriel. You’re fine. You were an alright employer. A bit shit, a bit inept, but alright. But that’s just that, you were my employer, paying me to do a job. Now you’re not, and what I do is my own fucking business.”

“Then why are you still here?”

“I’m here because those stupid fuckers out there are so shit scared of me that they keep brining me drink and root just to stop me from killing them. Eventually they’ll stop doing it, then I will kill them, then I’ll move on to the next place and probably do the same. Who knows? The world’s my fucking oyster.”

She tucked some Sodier’s Solace into her mouth.

“But what about satisfaction? What about meaning? I can’t believe I’m actually saying this, but what about revenge?” Gabriel sloshed a bit more of the soup onto his friend’s breeches, “Sorry.”

“I kill for coin. That’s who I am,” Lydia rolled her neck, “Look, I’m only going to say this once, partly because you only deserve to hear it once but mostly because you’re fucking irritating me now and I’ll slap your ponytail off if we have to talk about this again,” she looked him dead in the eye, “You did nothing wrong. We fought people, they fought back, I got burned.”

“Are we doing puns again?” Vish asked.

“You don’t have to feel guilty. You can stop this shit. I don’t even forgive you, because there is nothing to forgive. Well, apart from being shitty at paying on time.”

“About that, I still owe you for the last few cycles in Jandrir.”

“You can pay me in booze.”

“Ooor, I’ll double it if you sign on with us again!” Gabriel lost the remaining third of soup when he threw out his arms in welcome.

Lydia wiped a flake of rabbit flesh from where her eyebrow used to be.

“Goodbye, Gabriel.”

“No, it can’t end like this. It mustn’t! Gods, Vish, help! Say something!”

“Uuuh,” the mind-mapper searched for inspiration, “I love what you’ve done with the place?”