Titus awoke from his sleep. The torches had burnt out and a faint glow of light spread into the temple from a slightly ajar door. There was no sound or motion that woke him, just the natural rhythm of sleep that every adventurer develops eventually. It was impossible not to, after enough nights of being awakened for watch -- and being accidentally awakened by your teammates changing watch -- the body learned to wake itself on roughly the same schedule.
He was sitting upright against the wall in the front left corner of the temple, fully suited in his armor. It wasn't unusual for him to sleep in his armor when he was assigned to second watch, it was only for a few hours and it spared his companions from the noise of donning it for his watch, which was an exchange he was happy to make. At the end of his watch, he would find a quiet spot to remove the bulkiest pieces to sleep more comfortably through the rest of the night.
After a moment to collect his thoughts and fully wake, Titus slowly and carefully rose to his feet. Some faint clinking was inevitable, but he managed to stay quiet enough to not wake any of his companions. The door to the temple had been pushed most of the way closed by Autumn as the night began, but she had made sure to leave a gap large enough for Titus to squeeze through quietly.
He stepped outside to see Eli leaning against a pillar and staring out over the ruins. Rain still poured through the canopy and puddled in the ruins. Titus stepped up beside him and surveyed what little of the area he could make out through the darkness and rain.
"I think you're early again," Eli observed, quietly enough that his voice wouldn't drift inside.
"Good," Titus said, matching his volume, "do you feel like talking yet?"
Eli shook his head, "I've gotten more than enough advice from Victoria lately."
"Not about Iris," Titus looked towards him, "about you."
Eli gave him a side glance, but hesitated to speak.
While Eli was effectively the party's leader, Titus was the older of the two men by several years. They had both had formal schooling, but Titus had left his and begun adventuring at an earlier age, giving him even more experience than Eli. He avoided leadership roles, however, and was more than happy to let Eli take on the responsibility. The mismatched seniority combined with the lack of serious conversations that had been shared between them made Eli unsure how to respond.
Titus looked back to the ruins and took a breath before speaking again, "one thing that every healer has to struggle with is knowing that people get hurt. That's why we're here, why we're needed, but you can ask any of us -- we'd much rather not be needed. Every single time one of you gets hurt, I wish it had been me. I wish I could have stopped it. But people get hurt, that never stops."
He gave Eli room to speak, but he didn't, so Titus continued, "It shouldn't be that way. Every fiber of my being screams that it shouldn't be that way, but it is. Being the healer means hoping no one gets hurt and healing them when they do, it means keeping them alive despite the constant fear that I'll fail, despite the knowledge there might be nothing I can do at all. In a lot of ways, giving orders isn't all that different."
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They were both quiet for a while, then Eli spoke, "so what do you do?"
"I do my job," Titus said, "someone has to, it might as well be me."
Eli looked at the man in contemplative silence for a moment before he replied, "then how do you cope?"
"Truthfully?" Titus asked with a breath, "I don't. I feel the fear and the dread and the horror in every battle, and I go on anyway. The people I protect will fight with or without me, the only choice I have is whether or not I'm there to help. So if you ask me, the best response to those feelings is to accept that I have them and do the job anyway."
"So I should get over it?" Eli asked.
Titus snorted a quiet laugh, "if you figure out how to get over it, please let me know. I'm just saying, think about what matters to you, figure out what is and isn't in your power to change, and reconcile the two as best you can."
Eli nodded, and thought for a moment. Then he snorted and shook his head, "If that girl lives long enough, she'll be the death of me."
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The rain poured down on the canvas roof of the command tent. The main section was large enough to accommodate a six chaired oval table, narrow sets of drawers along both side walls, and a compact bar cabinet in the back. Also at the back of the tent, on either side of the bar cabinet, were smaller offshoot sections. The left side was obscured by a curtain and presumably served as the sleeping chamber, while the right side had the curtain open and was being used as storage for supplies stashed in crates and barrels.
"Smart choice bringing tents," Commander Bridge leaned back against the table and crossed his ankles as his voice turned fretful, "my men are getting soaked right about now."
"One day you'll learn to travel with comfort." The Dreamweaver poured a glass of dark liquor from the cabinet and held it out towards the commander. He instinctively held up his hand to decline, until he saw the familiar label on the bottle. At the same moment, he remembered the aching tension in his shoulders. He sighed, and accepted the drink.
The Dreamweaver turned back to the bar to mix a drink for herself, consisting of a clear liquor, a hefty drop of blue liquid from a small vial, and a few purple berries that she split with a pinch before dropping into the drink. As she worked, she spoke over her shoulder to Commander Bridge.
"Why is this only happening now?" She asked.
"I don't know," he replied.
"Who even built these things? What are they for?"
"I don't know," he repeated.
"Where do the Agents of Morose come into it all?"
"I don't know, Angela," he sighed, "I've already told you everything."
She mixed her drink with a small spoon, absently tapping it on the edge of the glass before setting it aside and turning to face the commander with a wondering expression, "you really think adventurers caused this?"
The commander shrugged, "it's all I've got. Unless Morose is behind it, and I don't even want to think about that."
"A press of a brick?" She jumped back to earlier in the conversation, "seriously? Damn near every adventurer on the planet runs around touching everything they see hoping to find a secret passage. There has to be more to this, or it would have happened before."
"I know," he took a long, contemplative sip of his drink, "they have to be related, the Agents of Morose and the structures. I don't like it, but no two happenings this strange ever happen separately."
After a moment of thinking and a sip of her drink, the Dreamweaver half-shrugged, "then either they're here to do something about it and it's not our concern, or they're behind it, and it's really not our concern."
The commander shook his head, "I wish I saw it that way, but you know as well as I do that if something big happens, it'll become our concern."