“How did you find me?” asked Delilah, sitting atop one of the buildings within the Nexus. Her toned legs dangled off the edge as she peered out at the people gathered around the market. Elijah couldn’t help but notice the long, puckered scar that ran from beneath her armored skirt – called a pteruges, if Elijah remembered his history – past her knee, and well into her calf.

“I found Isaak first,” he said, settling in beside her. He glanced up at the night sky, seeing that it was just as alien as it had been during the day. It was filled with a kaleidoscope of colors, reminding Elijah of the aurora borealis, but far more expansive than the northern lights back on Earth. Finally, after a few moments, he said, “He’s worried about you, you know.”

“He shouldn’t be. I’m fine. Great, even. This is an opportunity that only the strongest people on the planet get,” she said. “Why would anyone worry about me?”

Elijah sighed. According to Isaak, Delilah and her team had been hit hard only moments after arriving on the excised planet, and they’d been forced to battle their way through the jungle, with little rest between fights. Two of her companions had died, and she’d been grievously injured. Her leg was the worst of it, but she had taken quite a few other wounds as well.

“I cried after my first tower,” Elijah said. “Just tears of relief. Did I ever tell you about it?”

“You haven’t told me anything about yourself,” she pointed out.

Elijah realized that was true. He hadn’t treated her like a potential partner. He hadn’t even approached her like she was a friend. Instead, they’d used one another, without thought for anything but immediate release. She’d tried to be there for him after he’d built the Temple of Virtue, but he’d refused that connection. Now, there was a wide gulf between them that had become all but impossible to bridge.

“I haven’t been a very good friend to you, have I?” he asked.

She let out a harsh and humorless laugh. “We’re not friends, Elijah,” she said. “Acquaintances at best.” She glanced at him. “I didn’t even know you were at the top of the power rankings until like two months ago. Everyone else did, but not me. Do you know how that made me feel? Do you know how people must’ve looked at me when I talked about you?”

Elijah shook his head.

“It’s like we’re strangers,” she answered her own question. “Which I guess we are. Then, you disappear without warning, and you only come back for a few minutes before leaving again? You barely offered an explanation before you were gone.”

“I’m sorry,” Elijah said. “I can…I can be pretty selfish sometimes.”

That much was true. It always had been, too. He’d never really been a great partner to any of the women in his life. Even with his search for his sister, it had often felt less like a purpose and more like a side quest. Sure, he loved his sister. He also loved Lucy and Nina, his ex-girlfriend back in Hawaii, as well. He liked Delilah, too. But as wrapped up as he always was in his own issues, he rarely gave anyone else the attention they deserved.

Did that make him a bad person?

Seeing the way Delilah looked at him certainly made him feel like it.

“What do you want to know about me?” he asked, hoping to make up for his mistakes.

She shrugged. “It’s not always about you, Elijah.”

“What can I do, then? I want to help.”

“You can’t. Not unless you can bring people back from the dead. You can’t do that, can you? No. Nobody can. We run around acting like we can all perform miracles. That’s not true, though. We’re just strong enough to make us feel like we’re invincible. We’re not. We’re so, so far from that. I just got reminded of how the world works. So, I know your heart’s in the right place. I know you want to help. But you can’t. So, please – just stop. We’re not close enough to start having heart-to-hearts about dead friends.”

Elijah’s first impulse was to argue that she needed to talk about what had happened in the jungle. He knew she had lost people, and probably in horrifying circumstances, and he had been to therapy often enough to recognize the need to talk that sort of thing out. However, he could tell that if he kept pushing, she was going to run off. Or hit him. Maybe both.

So, he just sighed and nodded, saying, “Fine. But I’m still going to sit here with you.”

“Suit yourself. Just shut up for once.”

Elijah did, though he had some difficulty, knowing that Delilah was in pain and that there was nothing he could do about it. Still, he pushed his own desire to help aside and just sat next to her. Eventually, he ventured out and took hold of her hand. She flinched slightly at his touch, but she didn’t pull away. Neither did she tell him off. Instead, she just returned his grip with her own.

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Like that they sat for hours until, at last, she said, “I don’t know if I should stay.”

“Do you want my opinion?” he asked.

She shrugged, which Elijah took as the go-ahead to offer his thoughts. So, he continued, “You should stick around. You came here for a reason, right? You wanted to get stronger. So, this place will offer you the opportunity to do just that. Even if you’re not going to work on the challenges, the jungle offers plenty of chances to gain experience, and at a better pace than anywhere you have access to back home.”

She sighed and slumped her shoulders. “You know, for the first time since all this started, I’ve started to regret my decision to be a fighter,” she said. “When I first chose my archetype, Warrior sounded so awesome. I thought it would be like a game, that I would rise to the top. Same when I picked my class. But I’m barely in my sixties now. I’ve got a long road ahead of me. I’m looking at it, and all I can see is endless fighting. I lost Theresa and Gil a couple of days ago. Micah right after. It hurt, Elijah. Like, really hurt. They’re not the first people I’ve seen die, either. But they did everything right. They were strong. We thought…we thought we were all invincible.”

“Nobody is.”

“I know. That’s my point. Even if I make it, and I get to be level five-hundred or some ridiculous thing, how many of my friends am I going to watch die? How many people am I going to have to kill? It’s…I don’t know,” she said with a shake of her head. “Right now, I wish I would have picked that Tradesman archetype I was offered. Or even the Scholar. I could progress without having to put my life in danger. Without having to watch my friends die.”

After that, a long silence stretched between them before Elijah finally said, “You know you can steer your class away from that, right? That’s what evolutions are for.”

“I’m barely halfway to that point. And I have no idea what else I want,” she said. She ran her hand through her thick, black hair. “I don’t know. There is a chance that I’ll feel differently in a few days. It’s all just a little raw right now.”

“I definitely understand that,” Elijah said. “But for what it’s worth, I’m here, you know. Maybe I’m not the best person in the world. I’m selfish, rude, and more antisocial than I care to admit on my most days. I do care about you, though, and I want to help as much as I can.”

“Thanks,” she said. “But I think I need to work this out on my own.”

“Fair enough.”

In the end, the rendezvous did not go as Elijah had expected it to play out. He’d wanted to give Delilah some measure of hope. He’d even intended to invite her to join the team he’d formed with Sadie, Dat, and Kurik. However, that idea went out the window the moment he’d seen her mental state. She was in the wrong frame of mind to make an attempt at conquering the Trial’s first challenge. If she went out there right then, she’d likely end up dead or grievously wounded.

No – she needed time to find her own path, and until she did, taking her into a fight meant bringing a liability along. She wouldn’t thank him for that, so he’d abandoned that notion the moment he found her.

Finally, just as the sun was beginning to peek above the horizon, Elijah bade Delilah goodbye, then slipped from the roof. He landed with barely a sound before heading off toward the infirmary. Once he arrived, he unsurprisingly found the sparkly-robed Rob healing a few new patients. Elijah didn’t hesitate to lend his assistance, relieving some of the man’s burden for around an hour before heading back to the building Atticus and his alliance of Merchants and Tradesmen had set up shop. That’s where he found Sadie, already up and about and eating a bowl full of what looked like gruel.

There wasn’t much in terms of furnishings – just a couple of wooden tables and a handful of chairs – but Eliijah expected that Atticus and his alliance would change that soon enough.

Wanting to bridge the wide gulf that had sprung up between Sadie and himself, Elijah offered, “I’m going to make some coffee. You want some?”

“I don’t drink coffee.”

“W-what?” he asked, his jaw dropping. Obviously, Elijah was aware that there existed people who didn’t enjoy the most perfect beverage in existence, but he was still more than a little shocked every time he met one.

“I don’t like it. It’s too bitter.”

“It…uh…gives a long-lasting buff,” he said, unsure why he wanted to convince her to try his coffee. “Extra attributes.”

“Pass.”

Deciding to switch gears, he asked, “Pork jerky? It might go well with your…uh…gruel?”

“I’m a vegetarian,” she said. “And it’s not gruel. It’s porridge.”

“Fun fact – technically, porridge is classified as gruel. So are oatmeal, grits – it’s a thing in the southern U.S. – and most other ground oat slop.”

“Slop?”

Elijah shrugged. “I don’t make the rules.”

“First of all, what you just said is not true at all,” she said. “Gruel is distinguished by being thinner than porridge and oatmeal. And…you know what? I’m not justifying my food to you. I won’t criticize your carnivorous tendencies, and I would appreciate if you didn’t judge my diet.”

Elijah knew he’d messed up, so he just nodded and went back to making his coffee. Fortunately, there was a fireplace nearby where he could boil water for his coffee, and he did just that before making the beverage in his French press. Secretly, he expected that Sadie would come over to the right side of the coffee divide when she smelled it, but to his immense shock, she just turned her nose up and pretended like he – and the delicious coffee – didn’t exist.

Finally, he offered her a bit of his honey, saying, “It’s ethically sourced. The bees in my apiary are perfectly happy and very healthy.”

“You have an apiary?”

“Oh, yeah. I have a whole island. Kind of a paradise, if I say so myself. It wasn’t always like that, but it’s definitely my happy place,” he said with a smile. “My friend Nerthus is taking care of it right now.”

She just stared at him. “You live in paradise?”

He shrugged. “Pretty much,” he acknowledged. “Most of the time, I’m not even there, though. Like I said, it’s as much Nerthus’ island as it is mine.” That’s when he noticed her dark expression. “What? How did I offend you this time?”

Sadie just shook her head. “Nothing.”

Then, she quickly ate the last bite of her porridge, pushed away from the table, and strode away.

“What did I say?” Elijah muttered to himself.