Felun
Yichen was going to get here in thirty seconds or so.
Felun knelt and pressed a hand to deck, dived into ghostly traceries of flight spells and poured in a handful of magic. They flickered with one short spasm and died. There was no way he could power an entire skyship with his bodily reservoir alone. He yanked an Archival float rune from his book and stuck it to the deck, which raised the boat up a shaky few meters and no further. A well-placed concussive rune shattered the strained boarding plank linking them to the dock, but the gap was nothing a sufficiently determined mage couldn’t leap. He curled his hand into a fist.
“Go inside,” he told Ishaan. “There’s a pilot’s room at the front. You’ll have to get the flight magic running. There’s runestones—a wheel—”
“I don’t know how to fly a ship,” Ishaan said urgently.
“You probably know more than me,” Felun said. “It’s something like a mage-chariot.” Which likely wasn’t the most reassuring thing to say, but he had a better chance of stalling for time against Yichen than Ishaan did.
Ishaan gave a quick, sharp nod and crouched his steed down to skitter through the doorway. Felun readied his book, flipping it open to a spread of heavy concussives as Yichen drew closer. Nothing lethal. Maybe enough to give him ringing ears for a few weeks, which would serve him right.
“Haoyu,” Yichen said, stopping just out of range. “What the hell? I warned you.”
“Run along back,” Felun suggested. “Tell them all to let me go. Unless you sold out on me in the first place?”
Yichen gave a ragged laugh. “Don’t joke,” he said, almost beseechingly. “You know I wouldn’t—I’m not Guofan. I stopped mother from killing you, for heaven’s sake. Come quietly. It’ll be easier that way.”
More anger crested, familiar flicker of irritation fanned to a full flame. “Should I copy what you do, then?” he snapped. “What Guofan does? Bow down and lick the ground they walk on, like dogs?”
There was a long pause as Yichen exhaled.
“Have you ever considered,” Yichen said quietly, “that we’re like this because we grew up seeing what happened to you? Don’t put your failures on us, big brother. You learned to keep your head down too. It just took longer.”
“Please just shut up,” Felun snapped.
Yichen’s gaze sharpened. “Where are you even going, Haoyu? What can you possibly achieve? They’re preparing the chase right now.”
Felun ground his teeth together as the deck thrummed to life beneath him. “Then let’s hope we’re faster.”
“For god’s sake,” Yichen burst out, taking a step closer. Shockingly, there seemed to be genuine concern in his voice. “Aren’t you meant to be the smart one? You don’t know how to fly the damn thing! Neither does your friend in there! If they don’t board you or shoot you down, then the best you can hope for is to crash and die, you idiot!”
Clockwork ticked and groaned across the deck; the sails unfurled in sharp slaps of canvas. Felun looked his brother over and ran through some rapid calculations. “Are you going to throw useless insults, or are you going to help?”
Yichen blinked. “What?”
“I said, are you going to help?”
“What the hell, Haoyu?” Yichen snapped, but he wasn’t backing away just yet. Felun considered this a promising sign.
“You didn’t crash and die when you took mother’s clipper for a joyride. Five years ago, or something. The autumn festival. I even took some of the blame for you, remember? You clearly think you’re better at this than me. So hurry up and decide.”
“What—” Yichen spluttered. “What makes you think that I—”
“Haven’t you had enough?” he said, and he hardly recognised his own voice as he spoke. The words rasped like fire up his throat; he felt as though he were spitting poison. “Haven’t you had enough of this shit? Don’t lie, you’re as sick of it as Yuying and I are. Stay in this hellhole if you want, but don’t blame me when father brings the bloody Magicians down on you all. Last chance, little brother.”
Yichen’s posture stiffened, hands clenching into fists. He threw a glance back up the dock, where the crowd was growing, then back at Felun.
“How do you know I won’t turn the damn thing back around?” he asked.
“Because you’ve been waiting to get away for longer than I have,” Felun said. “Also, I can stop you.”
The spell-sight showed flight signs braided beneath every surface; he could heave them like muscles if he so chose, force the rudder so long as they had the altitude. The ship-spells rippled at his observation of them. For a split-second, he felt indomitable. The feeling disappeared as the ship jerked roughly into motion.
“Felun?” Ishaan’s voice called out, barely audible through the flapping cabin door. “Help with the—wheel!” The ship drew unsteadily away from the dock, bow skewed to the right. Then it creaked left, swaying alarmingly as the turn overcompensated.
Yichen gave another backward glance, before squaring his shoulders. He leapt, magic sparking in his hands, and barely cleared the growing gap. “I hope you fools have enough fuel.”
Felun followed as he bounded through the interior and into the pilot’s cabin.
“He’s with us,” Felun called out. “We need to go west.”
“What the—shit, okay,” Ishaan said, wrestling with the wheel. The clockwork crab scuttled unsteadily as the ship rocked from side to side.
“North-west if you’re aiming for Glister,” Yichen corrected, striding to the runestone array. He flicked a succession of levers, and the boat buoyed rapidly higher. “Think fast, Haoyu. They’ll be after us any second now. You, Ironport-guy, get out of my way.”
“Keep flying,” Felun said. The ship settled into cruising motion. Moonlit desert flew past through the windows, but an apothecary’s travel-craft was unlikely to outpace a fleet of cloudclippers without extra help. “I’m going to shield us. Ishaan, stop him if he tries anything—”
An explosion rocked the ship. The pilot’s array began to flash with amber lights.
“Great, that’s a hole through the aft,” Yichen snapped. “Do something, Haoyu.”
Felun swore and dashed back out on deck. Father’s cloudclippers were on their tail; sleek black vessels trailing pale jets of spell-vapour. There were eight of them, carrying mages and guards with crossbows. A quick glance behind him showed that a dozen arrows had punctured their sails, some wisping spellfire. Protective runes swarmed over the canvas, but a thread must’ve caught alight anyway because now a section was smoking in the wind.
A glowing slingstone bounced off his cloak, hard enough to bruise. He shielded belatedly, barely fast enough to deflect the next one.
Felun reached for his runebook and wound strings of runes into ropes. Shielding sigils and fireproofing signs, symbols to cushion and others to barricade. Enchantments scraped from dungeon walls, painstakingly lifted off thousand-year old brickwork. Hours upon hours of eye-watering, hand-blistering, tooth-aching work. He pulled them forth in a whip of shining fire and sent the lead edge looping, enough to circle the ship twice over. The smoking sailcloth extinguished itself.
The mages had coordinated throughout the clippers; a field of crackling white light flew straight towards them. Felun gripped his runequill and shielded himself, pulse thundering. Would it hold—? The clump of spells hit ring of runes with a sizzle and deflected upward, sheeting overhead like an unfalling wave.
His instincts were screaming at him to run, to hide back inside the boat. But he couldn’t run. He was their Breaker, the only one who could do this. He exhaled and started scratching runes into the deck. The clippers were still gaining on them. His hands bled over the most advanced signs for swiftness and amplification he knew. They’d be enough, he hoped. A crack echoed against the deck, followed by several more.
He snapped his gaze up to find grappling hooks sliding off his rune-shields. The clippers were close enough that he could make out the grim faces of their pilots. Did he have enough left in him to shoot them down? Probably not. His spellsight told him they had too much shielding of their own. He reached out and unraveled a tightly-packed bolt of spellfire homing in on the deck, and a bolt infused with red lightning. But if he and his runes could hold them off for long enough…he risked a backward glance, to where the mists loomed. The clippers were uncovered vessels. If they could make it inside…
A clump of movement caught his eye. More clippers, no doubt boosted with bottled winds and vapor-powder. Blue sails, he realised. Kingdom sails. They drew even with father’s vessels, creeping ever-closer.
One of the leading Magicians was surrounded by three others, each pouring magic with their hands on her shoulders. She held a pointed and faceted projectile in both hands. There was blood dripping from beneath their masks. Strong spells were one thing, but dread pooled in his gut at the sight of such a monstrously large spear of crystal…if that thing hit their ship, they were done for. Four Magicians’ worth of magic, he thought a little hysterically, and sent his runebook soaring beyond the barrier as she fired it.
The missile hit his open pages square-on, and the energy buffeted against his ship-shields. He darted forward to patch any holes the overflow might’ve caused. There were none, to his immense relief. Better yet, the four Magicians had slumped down and out of formation. His book had been flung down onto the deck, charred along every edge. It made no move to float into his outstretched hand as he summoned it, so the runequill it was. His first instinct was to scratch lines for swiftness and acceleration, but he’d never been particularly good at those. He stuck to what he knew, instead: warding, protection, even layered stasis to coat the surface of the aft and the pillar of the mast, which would take the brunt of any more oncoming spells.
Across the kingdom clippers, voices were rising in harmony. No other crystals in sight, but they were doing a group casting. A dozen of them, at least. He eked out a few more wards as the crafts began to shimmer, lingering as long as he dared. The working glowed an eye-watering silver. He’d done all he could. He dived inside, slamming the door a moment before the spells hit.
The ship rocked. He sensed his rope of runes thinning in places. Whatever the Magicians were using, it was far stronger than it had any right to be. He stumbled into the pilot’s cabin, wiping blood from his suddenly itching hands as another barrage hit them. His enchantments bowed under the strain.
“Faster,” he wheezed. “Get us into the fog.”
“Can’t do that,” Yichen snarled, working the wheel furiously. The ship lurched sideways and Felun’s stomach did too. “This ship’s got no air-filters, no gas-repellent spells, and no bloody self-contained atmosphere! We’ll suffocate. We have to go over.”
“We’re too slow!”
“No shit, Haoyu.”
Felun glanced around the cabin. “Where’s Ishaan?”
“Patching up the fucking holes in our stern! Which is not gonna help if I can’t make the speed, let alone altitude.”
“How much fuel—”
“I’m burning as much as I can afford. Can’t you fiddle with the engines, use a spell or—where are you going, asshole?”
Yichen spat out a string of aimless curses as Felun rushed back into the hall and ducked his head into each of the rooms. Apothecary Yawen must keep restorative potions onboard, he thought desperately. Surely. He threw open three different luggage chests before he found a crateful and downed as many as he could stomach.
Tossing the empty vials aside, he stumbled back into the hall, head pounding with the rush of it, guts whirling with nausea. He followed the veins of flight-spells back to the pilot’s cabin. It was the closest he could get to its heaving, glowing heart.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
“Don’t you dare faint on me,” he heard Yichen snap as he fell to his hands and knees. “God, I should never have listened to you. Your friend’s going to blame me when you keel over and die.”
Felun ignored him and placed his palms flat against the weathered wood, piercing through surface-level shunts and into the enchantments proper: countless coils and contours like hands clasped and dancing in tandem, the miracle of wood and metal shouldered aloft by magic and a thousand minds’ worth of blood, work, and ingenuity.
He reached into the enchantments, grabbed hold, and slung them forward and up. It was as simple as it sounded and much, much harder. The engines churned enough power to move the craft. The raw energy was all there, but shaping its momentum was almost too much for a single human body. It didn’t hurt, exactly. There was only a sort of pressure, unyielding and unmerciless pressure squeezing at his skull, his spine, his own fragile vessel of flesh and blood and very little more. He made a noise that was half-croak, half-wheeze. His lungs couldn’t pull enough air to really scream.
Their ship shot upward, over the killing mists.
For a while, there was nothing but movement and noise, a ringing in his ears as he forgot himself in favour of pushing the ship onward, patching overlooked leakages, shaping the enchantment to purest efficiency. He could feel the creak of wood and flap of swollen sailcloth more easily than his own fingertips.
And then someone was shaking his shoulder.
“Haoyu,” the someone burbled, as if his voice were coming from behind a great layer of water. “Haoyu, we made it over the mist. You gotta let go.”
Another shake, harder this time.
“Hello?” Fingers clicked in front of his face, and he blinked. “Whatever you’re doing, you can stop now.”
Felun pulled himself out of the flow of enchantment and pieced his consciousness back together. His ears popped. He was dimly surprised that he hadn’t fainted from the strain.
“Yichen?” he said, or tried to say. What felt like a cupful of blood poured from his mouth instead.
“Oh, gross,” Yichen said. “You’re not actually dying, are you?”
Felun managed to shake his head no. He was pretty sure he wasn’t, anyway. Yichen thumped him on the back as he coughed and spluttered. That strange, awful, all-over pressure of squeezing himself into the ship’s enchantments was gone, but now his head was killing him. It was the worst headache he’d had in a very, very long time. Every blink seemed to make him dizzier and dizzier.
“Where’s Ishaan?” he managed.
“Here,” Ishaan said from somewhere behind him. “Are you alright?”
He groaned. A band of nausea squeezed his stomach, right on cue. “Think I’m going to be sick.”
Yichen scrambled out of the way and came back with a bucket. Felun heaved up the contents of his stomach. They were a very interesting shade of purple.
“What potions did you take?” Yichen asked sharply, narrowing his eyes at the mess.
“Replenishing ones.” He spat bile into the bucket. “Speaking of. I think I need one.”
“You should probably have some water first,” Ishaan said sympathetically. “Rinse out your mouth, rehydrate, that sort of thing.”
Yichen frowned as he felt his forehead and took his pulse. Right, Felun recalled. He’d studied something of physic and medicines. Useful stuff, that. Mother had held hopes of making him into a court apothecary, which was basically a fancy name for a part-time poisoner. Felun’s thoughts flickered to the matter of fleshcrafters, then swiftly back away.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Yichen said. “Are you sure they were just replenishing potions? And not cut with other substances?”
“Sure. Had to be pure, right? Found them in Yawen’s room,” he said, gesturing weakly.
Yichen gave him a dubious look and marched off to see for himself. A minute later, he came back brandishing an empty vial.
“You drank the concentrate, Haoyu.” His expression, Felun noted, seemed to contain a mixture of horror, awe, and disgust. “Do you even know how many cups one of these little things dilutes into?”
“Does he need an apothecary?” Ishaan asked, sounding alarmed.
“He needs to not do magic for a couple of days,” Yichen snapped. “God, Felun, have a bit of sense next time?”
He gave a hacking laugh. “I helped, didn’t I?”
“You caused the problem in the first place,” Yichen muttered. “Don’t move. I’ll get you some water.”
Felun shut his eyes and lay his head against the floor. The ship seemed to whisper around him, its motion soothing and smooth as they glided their way toward Glister.
===
It took a very long sleep before he felt up to properly standing up again. Yichen and Ishaan had half-dragged, half-carried him into Yawen’s room to collapse into unconsciousness. The room had a bathroom suite attached—he guessed apothecaries were paid well—so he took the time to splash his face with water and scrub off. Dye runoff from the Magician cloak’s had soaked through his shirt and mottled his skin like strange grey bruises, and he grimaced to discover that he was covered in blood and sweat from the fight. His head still ached, and the muscles of his neck and shoulders were intent on twinging at random intervals.
He wound fresh bandages over his blistered hands and emerged from Yawen’s room to discover that Yichen had compiled a small hill of rations and weapons in the pilot’s cabin.
“I wouldn’t have taken Yawen for an archer,” Felun said, nudging a crossbow with no small amount of surprise. “She doesn’t have, what, two dozen guards either?”
“They were in the hidden compartment,” Yichen said with a shrug. “My guess is father’s instructions.”
“But this is way more than an ordinary stash,” he said aloud, thinking of the attack on the kingdom princess. “If they brought these kinds of thing along in every boat…” There was nothing so obvious as pieces of dart-launcher among the crossbows and their bolts, but he was now more than ever inclined to believe Silverwater’s accusation over his own suspicions about Iolite.
“You really think your father has it in him to conquer a kingdom?” Ishaan asked, looking up from his work. He was sitting on the floor, tinkering with the armature of his oversized crab. A nest of sopping wet towels surrounded him; the ice had long since melted and run everywhere.
Felun hesitated. “Something like that.” He turned to Yichen. “It’s a mess back home, isn’t it?”
Yichen shrugged. “They don’t talk to me about those kind of things. But I think mother was losing some of her footholds. They’re still doing well, by the looks of trade. Just not in court.”
“Hmm.”
He picked one of the crossbows up. They reminded him of Saiphenora, and Winterbird a little. But where their bows had been crafted from organic faery composite, simple and lithe, these crossbows were stockier and undoubtedly heavier. They had locking mechanisms, though. He might not be able to hold a draw force like Saiphenora could, but Cathayan engineering could do it for him.
“Put that thing down and stop being paranoid,” Yichen said sharply. “We’re almost over the mists and no one’s been following us.”
“I’m not being paranoid.”
“You’ve got that look on your face again,” Yichen retorted.
Felun raised his eyebrows. “What look?”
“The look you get when you’re planning something,” Ishaan said. He finished twisting a strand of wire around a piece of his construct.
“See?” Yichen snickered. “Tell him he’s wrong.”
“What are you doing when we get to Glister?” he asked instead.
Yichen’s expression sobered. “I don’t know. What are you going to do? Run off to be an adventurer again?”
He glanced down at his hands. “Uncle Jiahao and Aunt Shirin might still be there with Yuying. They might go right back to Shenzhou after a while, but I can’t—I mean, I won’t follow. You could leave with them.”
“After that stunt?” Yichen barked out a laugh. “The court’ll have my skin for sure—wait, wait, you said Yuying?”
Felun sighed and pulled up a chair as he explained. Yichen looked almost impressed by the end of it.
“Is that what you were disappearing off to do?” Ishaan asked keenly. “Or is there other stuff, like with your…colleague?”
Felun hesitated. “That’s a longer story.”
“We have plenty of time,” Yichen pointed out.
Reluctantly, he detailed the facts of his contract with Iolite.
Ishaan whistled. “If these faeries are in Glister, then shouldn’t we get as far away from it as possible?”
“We only have enough fuel to make it there,” Yichen pointed out.
“We could buy more fuel and sail somewhere else,” Felun suggested dubiously.
He wasn’t sure how they’d survive once they got there, wherever there was—selling the ship might keep them fed for a while, but what could they do after that? Wherever they went, they would run into the same essential problems.
His gut twisted grimly at the thought of more dungeonrunning, more Breaker work making his hands burst open in unhealing blisters. No skilled craftsfolk took random apprentices, and he knew from bitter experience that even the hardest, most backbreaking jobs cleaning ships and unloading docks were fought over despite their pitiful wages. Yichen was used to a comfortable life and would struggle to adjust even more than he had at the beginning. Ishaan was a little better off now that he had his crab construct, but his options were limited. And what would he do once the crystals powering that thing ran out?
“Where, exactly?” Yichen asked. His tone suggested that he was considering similar problems.
“Not Ironport,” Ishaan said.
“No,” Felun agreed tiredly.
The dark gold light of sunset struck the far wall. He glanced out the pilot’s window and pushed those uneasy musings from his head for the time being. “Have we left the mists behind already?” he asked, surprised.
“No thanks to you,” Yichen said. He paused. “Don’t mess with the ship any more, Haoyu. I can tell you’re thinking about it. We’re flying along fine, we’ll get to Glister when we get there.”
“I wasn’t,” he scowled. “I’m going to take a look up on deck.”
“Wait—”
Yichen followed him hastily. Felun shook his hand from his shoulder. “Let off. I’m not going to fall over the side.”
“You need someone to keep an eye on you,” Yichen said.
The words jabbed at an unexpectedly tender spot. “You’re not my nursemaid,” he sneered.
“No,” Yichen said. “But I am your brother. Whether you like it or not.”
Felun opened his mouth to snap another insult, then shut it again with a pang of guilt. There was nothing he could say that wouldn’t sound hideously ungrateful, so he settled for walking quickly ahead.
He emerged to the dying edge of summer. The clouds were lit up in red and gold, and a hot wind ruffled his shirt. When he circled the perimeter, the damage wasn’t as bad as he’d feared. His runes had taken a battering, but some were still salvageable. Then he remembered he’d have no place to store them for later; one flip through his runebook had showed him its workings were well and truly dormant, if not dead. Perhaps he could salvage that with an enchanter’s help, but it was a problem for the future. For now, he settled himself at the base of the mast to watch the landscape roll on by. It was a barren and sandy view, the only signs of life being the occasional stunted bush or tree.
Yichen watched him sharply, but seemed satisfied he wouldn’t do anything foolish and disappeared back below deck. Felun shut his eyes and slipped into an almost-doze, his entire body drenched in weariness. He was surprised when a clatter of footsteps signaled Yichen’s return.
“What?” he said irritably.
Yichen sat nearby and held out a cupful of tea as he set down a plateful of steamed buns. “Eat up. You’ll soon be skin and bones if you don’t.”
“You sound like Uncle Jiahao,” Felun said, but he took the tea and a bun anyway.
Yichen gave him an offended look. “If I do, it’s only because I was the one taking care of Yuying and—” Here, his mouth twisted into a grimace. “And believe it or not, Guofan too, while you danced off to Ironport.”
Felun looked up. The dough seemed to stick in his throat. “I wasn’t having as much of a fun and merry time as you think.”
Yichen exhaled explosively, not meeting his eyes. “Well—yes, alright, fine. Sorry. I know you…I spoke to your friend while you were out. But Haoyu, you still shouldn’t have just disappeared like that. You act like we’ve all wronged you, and yet—”
“Remember all the times father locked me in a room and whipped the shit out of me?” Felun snapped. “How often did that happen to you, Secondson?” He spoke the last word with a particular bite. “You don’t know what it was like. You would’ve run away too, if you were me.”
“I wasn’t the one punishing you,” Yichen shot back, expression furrowing into a glower. “Stop acting like I am. Did you expect me to, what, leap between you and the belt? I recall you never did for me, or for Guofan, or even for Yuying.”
“They never did anything like that to Thirdson Guofan.”
“You’re not very observant, are you?” Yichen said. “This is what I mean. You always only think about yourself.”
“Don’t even pretend you had it as bad as I did,” Felun said, drinking the last of the tea.
“I never said that. But you don’t understand, do you? You don’t even want to try. You think because they hurt you most, that you never brought some of it onto yourself? That by not helping you, we’re all specifically against you?”
“You’re saying I deserved it?” He laughed humourlessly. “Piss off, Yichen.”
“No. I’m just saying you acted…wrong, on purpose, sometimes. And it was never my job to protect you from the consequences of your own actions, so don’t blame me for keeping my head down.”
Yichen’s voice seemed to crack at the end, and somehow that was enough to make him feel even lousier. Felun snorted and shrugged, glancing expansively over the deck. “I suppose I can’t, seeing as we’re in the same boat now.”
Yichen threw a steamed bun at his head. Felun snickered as he caught and ate it.
“That’s not funny. Stop avoiding the subject.”
“I’m not,” Felun said, slightly muffled through a mouthful of bun. “I mean, I think you’re wrong about me, but I don’t hate you. Thanks for not letting mother gut me, by the way.”
“You’re welcome,” Yichen said flatly. “But seriously, where are you going? They aren’t going to forgive you this time.”
“That’s the magic of it,” Felun said. “I don’t have to forgive them, either.”
“Haoyu—”
“Dungeon work, I suppose. I need to scrounge up something for Ishaan’s situation, see him off home or something like that. I owe him that much. After that, I really don’t know. And you? You can still go back to Shenzhou, you know. Say I abducted you at arrowpoint or something, and you had no choice. They’ll believe it. And Yuying will be happy to see you.”
Yichen frowned. “It isn’t safe for you to travel around working as some kind of magical mercenary.”
Felun suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. “Really? I would never have guessed.”
“I’m serious. You shouldn’t stay on this bloody old continent. It’s got too many colossal monstrous things walking around and magic mazes sprouting beneath your feet. Does any of that seem natural to you? Come back to Cathay, even if not Shenzhou.”
“Father’s got too many connections in Cathay,” Felun said dismissively. “Sooner or later, I’d run into someone loyal. And then, well, you know. It’s not worth it.”
“Go further south, then,” Yichen pressed. “Do you even know what you’re saying, Haoyu? You’re going to just leave forever and never see any of us again? And I don’t mean mother and father, I mean Yuying and Jiahao and the rest. And me—I can’t be that bad if you can still stand talking to me.”
Felun shrugged uncomfortably. “Yuying will be fine if she has you looking out for her.”
“No she won’t,” Yichen said, voice hardening. “Come on, you can’t do that to her. Father told a little story about you eloping with some girl, but we’re not stupid. I was really wondering for a bit whether you’d killed yourself and they were just too ashamed to tell us the truth. Yuying was crying over it for months. Did you ever stop to think about that? You could’ve at least left a note.”
“I would’ve, if I thought I could’ve gotten away with it,” he said defensively. “I needed all the head start I could get.”
“Well, I suppose an extra couple of hours’ uninterrupted fleeing was worth breaking your baby sister’s heart for,” Yichen said.
The sarcasm was so thick it could be spread like butter. Felun stuffed another steamed bun into his mouth to avoid replying.
“Think about it a little more before you go haring off again,” Yichen said, rising to his feet. “I can see for myself that the work you do isn’t safe. Who are the oldest dungeonrunners you’ve met, by the way? Or oldest Breakers, for that matter? Are they retired, or all just dead?”
“I wouldn’t do it for long,” Felun said stiffly. “But it’s how I make money and I owe Ishaan.”
“Alright, sure. But do you think so little of me that you assume I would be happy to go and live the rest of my life not knowing whether you were still alive, or blinded and begging on the street, or bleeding out in a ditch somewhere?” Yichen’s voice shook. “Even if you don’t care what a Secondson thinks, at least spare a thought for Yuying.”
He walked off before Felun could form a response.