The journey back to Glenheim with Myra is (mercifully) uneventful.

I say merciful because nothing is currently trying to kill me. Nothing except from my own racing mind.

We travel through the forest in silence, observing the mushrooms glimmer against the onset of fast-falling night. The only thing Myra says is that we should camp up by the old shack again – we’ll be back to Glenheim within a day where I’ll be ‘officially recognized’ as an honorary member of the Glenmaidens. Or Glenhound – whatever.

Besides that, we say nothing. I’d almost say she’s more reluctant to swap words with me now as opposed to when I was 75% sure she was kill me. Now? I’m at 92%. I still think she looks at me funny sometimes.

We get a small campfire going and she rolls out two bedrolls, still silent, still totally stoic like the ideal ‘warrior’ she’s always harping on about. I watch her out the corner of my eye as I sprawl out and make myself as comfortable as a blade-laden fluffy boi can be.

You need to ask her, I think. You know what you need to ask her.

I give a gruff cough as she turns over and acts like she’s falling asleep.

“Myra?”

No answer.

Doggie time.

Wait.

No.

I mean – it’s time to act like a dog.

Don’t take that out of context…

I toddle over to her and nose her back, trying to turn her over. When that doesn’t work, I paw at the rim of her armor.

“Myra, come on,” I say. “Look, I know you’re awake. I know you’re ignoring me.”

She sighs heavily, gently pushing me away.

“Go to bed, Raziel.”

“No!” I bark, waking up at least three owls who take to the air from the trees around us. “Look – I just want to talk!”

She drops her hand.

“About what?”

“About – about – well – you, I guess,” I say.

“You don’t need to know about me,” she says. “I’m a warrior of no importance.”

I scoff. “You’re literally training the Lightborn!” I shout. “The guy that’s meant to save the world? Hello? Arwyll to Myra? Just like Palka said – you’re gonna be famous when I beat the Darkseed’s branchy old butt!”

She sighs again. “Am I?”

“Of course! They’ll probably write songs about you. About how you taught me everything I know. They’ll embellish a few things, sure, but who doesn’t? The most important thing is-“

“You still do not understand, do you?”

I fix my gaze on her rising form – her chest rising and falling with pain. Her fists clench. Her eyes narrow.

“Why are you here, Raziel?” she asks. “Just to learn what you can and then move on? You think the Mistress cares about the songs they will sing of your victory?”

I back up, trying not to whimper in the face of her fury.

“I’m here to learn how to beat the thing that’s out there screwing up the world. I thought maybe you wanted the same thing?”

She looks at me as though she wants to draw her sword across my neck. Now the real thing behind her eyes comes out – and its anger. Pure and simple.

Then, just when I think she’s gonna bellow a battlecry and take my head, she laughs, full and deep. But its laughter that’s also tinged with heavy sorrow.

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“Of course!” she says. “You have no idea, do you? You have no idea what’s happening here. You have no idea how little we care about the world out there – about Arwyll. Haven’t you seen the Sisters? They don’t trust humankind. They resent what the Lightborn is. They don’t want to help the world out there. They never have. They never have since…”

She trails off, focusing on the darkness beyond the forest. The valley beneath us sheathed in shadow.

“Since the Lightborn came,” I finish for her. “Yeah, that much I know. He came and took your sisters from you. And you hated him, didn’t you?”

She hunches her shoulders. She says nothing.

So I press forward. “Is that why Seneca left?”

A flash of rage flares up on her face and before I know it she’s drawn her sword, meeting the tip of mine head on.

“Say that name again,” she says. “And that word shall be your last.”

“I don’t doubt it,” I answer, feeling my heart pounding more ferociously than when I’ve fought actual mindless killing-machines. “But that doesn’t mean I’m just gonna ignore this anymore. I know Seneca was your Master. I know this was her sword, and youknow that the reason I was so messed up when you found me out here was because of her.”

She grinds her teeth. But I feel it – her sword arm wavers.

“Did you feel sorry for me?” I ask her. “Did you think you owed me something because it was your exiled Master that did that to me?”

Her sword begins to slide away, though I know her arm is still poised to strike.

“Alright,” she whispers. “Alright, Raziel. Yes. You have been trained all this time by the first student of Seneca Silvervale – chief swordmaiden of Glenheim. The slayer of a hundred humans who was exiled for her crimes. You’ve been trained in the very same arts of death that she once taught me. And soon, you’ll become just as corrupted as she was. As I am.”

“Nope,” I say confidently.

“Yes.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Yes!”

“I know you are, but what am I?”

“That makes no sense!”

“Youdon’t make sense, Myra!”

The strength in her arm returns.

“WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!”

“I WON’T END UP LIKE HER!” I shout through chittering teeth “Because I’m here to tell you: you’re not the person she is. You’re not responsible for what she’s done. Or what she’s become.”

Our blades scratch against eachother for another solid minute before her arm begins to falter again.

“You aren’t ‘corrupted’. You’re just different, Myra,” I say as her face melts from rage to just plain misery. “The other elves might not care about the world out there, but you do.”

“How do you know?” she asks me quietly; her voice barely audible even in the dead still of night.

“Because,” I say. “I trust you.”

The flames of the bonfire flicker and spark against the moonlight that descends from above, falling beneath the mountains of the Demesne, where I know Gyko waits.

“I’ve seen the way you look at the valley down there. Sometimes I think you look like you wanna do nothing more than just run around down there, among all the humans that you can’t ever get close to, and just let your hair down and swim in the river. Hell, I wanna. That’s why I’m here.”

She lowers her blade and drops her gaze with it, her gauntleted fist clenching and opening like she’s trying to catch something she can’t quite hold.

“Do you know what the worst part is?” She says with a wet sniffle, shielding her face from my eyes as I sheathe my sword. “You actually mean these things you say.”

She slumps down, back hard against the side of the old wooden shack beside our fire, then draws up her knees and crosses her arms over them. Her sword she’s simply left by her side. She’s not even looking at the flames that dance up its surface now.

“They are going to come for us,” she says, trying to keep herself from shaking. “Seneca, and the armies of this Darkseed. They will find us, and they will make us become part of this world that we’ve always feared so much. Only they’ll make us become the thing that’s making it a worse place to live.”

I walk over and place a fluffy paw on her hand, trying to catch her eyes.

“When they do, I’ll be here. I promise.”

She shakes her head. “You would have less reason to remain with us than anyone else,” she sniffles. “I’ve treated you like a piece of dirt all this time. The rest of them have seen you as nothing but a toy – a cuddly plaything. Just a curiosity. And the Mistress? She is wiser than I am. Wiser than any of us by dint of having lived for countless centuries. If she says the Lightborn is nothing but a burden on this world, how can I oppose her? Who am I, if I do not serve my Sisters, and my Mistress? Who am I, if I am not – hey!”

I’ve done it. Ladies, gentlemen, and everything in between, I’ve only gone and done it.

In her moment of distraction, I’ve managed to snuggle into Myra’s lap.

“This is my version of bonking you,” I say, making myself comfortable on her (surprisingly) soft thighs.

She raises her hand as though she’s about to strike at me. But the attack never comes.

“W-why?”

I roll over so that I’m looking up at her, being caught off guard momentarily by her red-rimmed eyes.

“Because you’re being dumb!” I say. “You’re acting like you’re just a sword to be used whenever its convenient. But you aren’t. You’re an Elf of Glenheim, but you’re also you. Just like I’m me, even though I’ve also gotta be the Lightborn, right?”

She scoffs at me, tearing her face away and yet, slowly but surely, I feel her hand descend to touch my fluffy stomach.

“Dogs are such manipulative creatures,” she says with a little laugh, still looking out onto the darkness of the shadow-drenched valley.

“It’s what we do,” I reply. “Lesson #1: a dog must be cute. It’s the best defense.”

“I have – that is – I have never done this before,” she says, still hiding her face from me. “I do not know how dogs like to be stroked.”

“That’s the beautiful thing about it,” I say with a yawn. “You can’t do it wrong.”

We lie like that for the rest of the night, saying nothing, feeling the warmth of the bonfire’s embers play up our sides until the flame smokes and starts to trickle to nothingness. But neither of us feel the warmth leave us.

“Raziel?” Myra asks me as I start to dose off.

“Yeah?”

Her hand stops. It tenses, balls to a fist, and then relaxes again in the next second.

“Nothing.”