It was incredible what a long, hot bath did for the soul after weeks out in the wild. Well, that and waiting two long hours for Aerion and Richard—let’s be honest, mostly Aerion—to finish. Not only did she go first, she happily took a whole hour and a half to herself, though I had to admit, she positively glowed when she emerged.

Richard and I were a bit more frugal with our time, taking a half hour a piece in the beautiful marble bath pool. More than enough to feel like a new man.

The icing on the cake? Floating around in a huge pool of hot water was one of the few times I didn’t notice my stat loss with my armor off.

Freshly cleaned, and with our clothes and armor magically laundered by a Boonworthy the inn’s staff retained—talk about bizarre yet strangely useful powers—we headed down the stairwell.

For the first time in what felt like forever, Aerion wore a pretty white dress that complemented her platinum blonde hair, which she wore down.

“You really ought to do that more often,” I muttered, ensuring Richard, who’d gone on ahead of us, couldn’t hear. Aerion wasn’t the fastest stair climber in her heels.

“Why’s that?” she asked, tilting her head. “You know why I don’t.”

“Sure, it’s just… You’re pretty. It’s a shame to hide that all the time. I really don’t think you need to be so paranoid about people finding you here.”

“That’s… sweet of you,” Aerion said, looking downcast. “If only it were so…”

She said nothing more, and we reached the bottom before long.

“So! Now that we’re all freshened up, how about we go kill some monsters in the forest?” Richard asked in an excessively cheery voice.

“I think I’ve had enough action for a lifetime,” I replied. “Or at least a week, or so.”

“I think I’m going to be sick if anyone mentions fighting tonight,” Aerion said, looking utterly disgusted. “In fact, I believe I need a drink. Or ten.”

Richard and I stopped in our tracks and stared in shock.

Aerion narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “What?”

----------------------------------------

The sun might’ve set, but the city felt like it was just waking up. As more and more people learned of the good news, they piled into the streets, eager to wash away weeks and months of anxiety and sorrow.

Which, of course, meant all the good taverns, meadhalls, and alehouses were all occupied. A problem that could be trivially solved by having Richard announce who he was, but that just created a dozen other problems of its own.

This was a world without social media, where even celebrities might go unnoticed. The chances anyone found out were very low.

So we chitchatted and hung out in line. It wasn’t so bad—the energy of the city was infectious, and the tavern girls even brought out drinks to people in line.

With so many people around us, though, we couldn’t exactly talk about anything sensitive, so we kept it to small talk. Details about Basecrest, what Baron Sinclair was like, and some of the escapades Aerion and I had been up to.

Then, about fifteen minutes in, it happened. It started with an innocent double-take from a middle-aged man in line nearby. I ignored it at first, but then they kept glancing back at Aerion, muttering with more and more excitement to their friends.

I moved a bit to shield her from their sight, but I knew the damage was done when they left their place in line to walk up to me, eyes full of hope.

Nobody left their place in line. Not one as long as this.

“Excuse me? Pardon my interruption, but… You’re Silver, aren’t you?”

Aerion turned, and the man’s eyes flew wide. “By Dominion, it is you! It’s Silver, everyone!”

I groaned. Any chance we had of flying under the radar was gone. The crowd around us went silent, and I felt at least thirty pairs of eyes boring holes on Aerion and me.

“And is that Light of the Fearless!?” the man said, turning to me. That was apparently the moniker they were using for Silver’s bodyguard.

“Look,” I said, “if you don’t mind, we’d like to—”

“You both made it! You survived the dungeon!” the man blurted.

If we had thirty sets of eyes before, now we had the attention of the whole goddamn line.

Gossip immediately broke out. “Silver? She’s that up-and-coming Elf Hunter, isn’t she?”

“I heard she personally took down that slum lord. What was his name?”

“Tarquin! Not just that, she delved Dominion’s Trial on her own. Rumor is she came away with incredible power.”

“Er, yes, we did,” Aerion said, trying her best to ignore the chatter.

“Three cheers for our heroes!” another man said, raising his empty mug to the sky.

The line erupted in hoots and applause, and before we knew it, our group was being pushed to the front of the line amid more cheers.

Aerion waved to the crowd while I followed behind, acting like the stoic bodyguard I absolutely was… I did not act that way to get out of having to reciprocate. Definitely not.

Richard walked beside me, tagging along. “Quite the reputation you two have, eh?”

“Entirely unintentional, I assure you,” I muttered. I hadn’t exactly planned for our alter egos to become famous… Though I had to admit, it had its perks. And it helped conceal our true identities better than anything else could.

The tavern was a massive three-story affair of timber construction with an A frame roof. Only the ground floor spanned the whole area, and was so packed with people, people squeezed and pushed their way past the bodies.

Not us, though. Someone announced our arrival, and in a repeat of what happened outside, the place went silent for a moment before bursting into applause and cheers. We had alcohol of all kinds being shoved our way, and like Moses parting the sea, the crowd split in front of us.

Maybe it had something to do with the tavern’s owner—a bald, slender giant with an epic beard that had to be at least eight feet long—personally coming out to greet us. He wasn’t skinny, per se. He would’ve been pretty muscled, actually, if he was regular sized. On his extra tall frame, though, he just came across as lanky.

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“I’m sure you’re tired and looking for some rest, but… We’re all dying to hear what happened. Would you mind sparing a few words?”

The whole place went so silent, you could hear every drunk burp.

Aerion gave the man an awkward smile.

“It would be my pleasure,” she said, raising her voice so everyone could hear. “It was a harrowing dungeon. Cold, and full of ice and other things too terrible to mention in such esteemed company,” she said, sounding like a natural-born orator and earning herself a round of laughs.

No one spoke that comfortably without practice. And training. More mysteries to add to the pile.

“It was terrifying,” Aerion said in a lower voice. “And as much as I appreciate the sentiment, it was not us who defeated the core. We merely aided the Champions of Dominion and Passion. Without them, we would surely have died. But by working together, we narrowly managed to prevail.”

Aerion glossed over my role in destroying the core, which was exactly what I hoped she’d do. Better to divert as much of the attention off of me and onto her. Fewer questions that way.

“The fair lady is modest!” the tavern wonder said. “Not only did she risk her life for our city, she participated in the final battle! In the company of Champions, no less!”

The whole place blew up with cheers and claps, and I felt like I’d go deaf from the insane amount of noise. If the neighborhood hadn’t known something was up before, they sure as hell did now.

The cheers had only just started to die down when the owner cried, “Free drinks for the heroes all night long!” His proclamation was followed by another round of cheering.

“Enjoying yourself?” Aerion asked cheekily as she waved to the crowd.

“Do I ever?” I fired back in the same tone. “Can’t wait until the procession.”

Aerion snorted, but thanks to the noise, I was the only one who heard it.

We followed our four bar hands—why we needed four, I couldn’t begin to guess—all the way to the back of the establishment to the stairs.

The second floor was only half the width of the space, allowing anyone seated there to look down on the mob below, and the third floor was even smaller.

That was where our table happened to be. Our position of honor.

Which suited all of us just fine. It was far less crowded up there, and the view of the tavern was sweeping. I felt sorry for all the bar hands that had to bring food and drinks up two flights of stairs up there, though they seemed to take immense pleasure in the task. We’d have to remember to tip well. Especially considering drinks were free.

“You see why I asked to stay anonymous now?” Richard said, letting out a long, heavy breath as he slumped on his chair. Half the people on the floor were still staring, of course, but at least they couldn’t hear us. “Now that we’ve a bit of privacy, I won’t have to mind every other word.”

“You get used to it,” Aerion said with a wry smile.

“Right, I reckon you’ve had your fair share of flying under the radar, so to speak,” Richard said. “What with your assistance of the Baron, and all. Practically celebrities here.”

“The more I live it, the less I want it,” I grumbled, flagging over the bar hand who’d been assigned to our table. “I don’t know about you, but I could eat a bear.”

“I’m right there with you, friend,” Richard said, taking a menu.

While the amount we ordered sounded sensible, none of us took into account the ginormous portions, and once plate upon plate of food started to arrive, along with pitchers of mead, ale, and bottles of wine, it became obvious we weren’t finishing this.

“Bollocks,” Richard said. “It’s my bad.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I’ve got a feeling they made the portions extra large, especially for us. Besides, did you forget about my Boon?”

Richard’s eyes widened, and his mouth formed an ‘O’. “Awfully handy, that,” he said. “Once this Cataclysm business is over, I reckon you could make a killing starting up a food delivery business.”

Aerion laughed, but Richard went on, unfazed. “I’m serious!” he said, sweeping his arms across the air. “Just think of the possibilities! Think of the slogans! Food that never spoils! Fresh out of the oven! Now that is a competitive advantage if I ever saw one. The delivery companies back on my world would kill for that!”

After the Cataclysm, huh? What the fuck was going to happen to us?

Finding a rapt listener in Aerion, Richard went on about the legendary pizza joints and delicious Indian curry in his native England, while I zoned out, lost in my thoughts as I sipped on my mead.

The more I learned, the more I thought about our situation, the more I became convinced that something more was going on here. Something hidden from the public eye. And it all boiled down to that one question—do we all get to go home or not?

I’d been through this mental debate a dozen times already, and it always boiled down to two options. Either we did, in which case it was a safe assumption that we lost our powers, or we didn’t. Who the hell knew what happened in that case? We sure as hell weren’t allowed to stay. Axius’ historical records proved that without a doubt.

Did we ascend to some godly plane? Were we transported yet again to another world that needed us? Or…

I shook off the thought as I always did, tuning back into Richard’s monologue. He was talking about cars, now. Of all the things Aerion latched onto, it was station wagons… Go figure.

“What about you, Greg?” Richard said suddenly.

“Er, sorry?” I replied, caught off guard.

“What sort of film do you think you’d enjoy?”

So they were talking about movies, now? Aerion looked downright enthralled… I couldn’t blame her. Movies and videos were things I took for granted in the modern day, but to a society that lacked it, it must’ve sounded like the best thing since sliced bread.

“Oh, er, I dunno,” I said, shuffling uncomfortably in my seat. “Maybe something epic?”

My chest suddenly felt hot, and it was like I was a stranger in my own skin. It was all so wrong… and it wasn’t the booze. Or at least, not just the booze. It was all this pretending, faking things I already knew. I’d happily do that for someone I didn’t care about. But at the expense of a guy with a heart of gold? At the expense of someone who’d saved my back on numerous occasions?

“I’ve just the thing for you, then!” Richard said, slamming his palm on the table, spilling alcohol of all sorts. “Now, get this,” he went on, oblivious. “There’s a movie that came out just recently, yeah? Called Star Wars. It’s about a society far away that’s mastered spaceflight.”

“Space… flight?” Aerion asked. “Is that any different from the way birds fly?”

I groaned. Really, Aerion? Did you have to open that can of worms?

Richard clapped his hands together with glee. “Boy, am I glad you asked! Y’see, back in the sixties, we decided to go higher than any man ever had. We went to space. And then? We went to the moon…”

The Champion then proceeded to spend the next half hour describing the space race in excruciating detail. It seemed Richard was something of a space nerd. The half hour after that was spent bemoaning that, despite having stepped foot on the moon in the sixties, humanity had done nothing in the decades since. Something that drove him up the wall, apparently.

Maybe it was my ever-increasing drunkenness, but I found my earlier angst melting away, and as Richard shared detail after minute detail of Earth, I, too, fell under the spell of nostalgia, my mind whisked away to another place and another time.

The conversation meandered, and I wasn’t really sure how the guy had gone from the space race to giving us the nitty-gritty about his family, but then again, none of us were even remotely sober.

“They say love at first sight’s nothing but infatuation,” Richard slurred, leaning over the table toward Aerion, who listened as though it was her prized god Dominion speaking. “But y’know what? Wasn’t that way with Miranda. Some things in life… Y’just know. Know what I mean?”

“Yes! I do!” Aerion shouted, nodding vigorously. She was just as drunk as Richard, if not more.

“Exactly!” Richard said, essentially agreeing with himself. “She didn’t like me, though, you know? Not at first. Took some doing, that. But I won her over eventually, sure as day.”

“How!?” Aerion asked.

“Well, the roses and letters certainly helped. Some might say a bit old-fashioned, but it was what she liked. Truth is, there’s no one size fits all. Gotta play her heartstrings, see? Give her exactly what she wants. But only in small doses, mind you. Too much, and she’ll lose interest.”

Aerion was nodding so much I worried her head would fall off. I could almost see the mental notes she was taking in her head. No one size fits all. Heartstrings. Not too much.

“So, you don’t regret it?” Aerion asked.

“Not for a moment,” Richard said. “Mind you, no relationship’s without its ups and downs, but… The memories we shared. The moments we created. The children we raised… I tell you, Aerion, there is no joy greater in life than seeing life you created come into the world. No happiness more pure than watching them learn. To crawl. To babble. To walk…”

Tears began rolling down Richard’s cheeks. “Oh, my. Apologies. I don’t know what came over—”

“You miss them,” Aerion said softly.

“I do,” Richard said, openly sobbing at this point. “I miss them so very much.”

Aerion leaned over and gently patted his back. “You’ll get to see them soon enough,” she said, throwing me an expectant look, but I had no words of comfort for Richard. No assurances that would soothe his aching soul.

All I had was the terrifying possibility that he may never see them again. I wouldn’t do that to him. Not now. Not until I had ample evidence Order was right and Passion was lying.

But there was something else I could do. Something I should have done already.

“Being torn away from all that you know, never knowing when you’ll come back… Must feel a little like Luke Skywalker leaving Tatooine for the first time, wouldn’t you say?”

Richard froze, looking up at me with eyes as wide as saucers.

“Sorry? Don’t think I quite caught that…” he wheezed. “What did you just say?”

My lips drew taut. “Richard… We need to talk.”