They walked up the slope, stepping onto the remaining pavement of Route 4. The road had been damaged when the Connection had appeared, chunks pushed up, cracks across the road. There was barely any actual pavement left. The jagged chunks had been removed, piled up in strategic locations in front of the wall to provide barriers for charging attackers. Even the parts that hadn’t been destroyed were removed, leaving hard packed dirt.

Eventually that dirt would become grass or maybe turned into fields to grow crops. There was no need of paved roads anymore. It had been decided that the material would be used for something else. Nothing could be built with it, but piled up it made an effective deterrent.

There was no decision made on how far they’d go with removing the pavement. Outside the wall, the jagged areas had been left for now. It had helped the defenses when the gaunts had attacked. But to the side of the school, all that pavement was in the process of being removed. That was being stacked on the east side to form a mounded wall. Coming down from the school steps, concrete pavers had been moved to form a walk, instead of stepping onto the pavement.

One of the Clanmembers ended up being a former Landscape Architect and was now working to design landscaping around the school. It was to be decorative, but the emphasis was on functionality. Some paving, where able, was left to form walks that could be shoveled.

The last few years the snowfall hadn’t been bad. Instead of snow throughout the winter months, it had been piled on in a few weeks at the beginning and end. A lot of power outages and a few days of intense snow removal. Cerie had said that with the coming of the Connection, weather patterns would become stronger, which led Loch to believe it meant they were in for a lot of heavy snowstorms.

Not only was making sure they had enough food a priority, but making sure they could still get around the school when the snow fell was high on the list.

Loch looked toward the school, seeing a small crowd gathering. Drew Meyers was there, along with Davis Millman. A couple people from each of their teams. Darren Holmberg was talking to some guards, with Kristin, Ed and Susan Turner standing on the steps. People moved through the schoolyard, all looking toward Loch but most kept up with what they had been doing. Some stopped and stared.

He saw that most of the people moving around didn’t really have anything to do. They were looking busy, or just sitting on the grassy areas. Some looked depressed, completely lost. Thankfully, most, even those that weren’t busy, didn’t seem as depressed or as lost as they would have only a couple days ago. It even looked like a new shift of workers were going out to replace those in the fields or the lumberyard.

Loch studied the faces of Drew and Davis. Their full teams weren’t with them, but did that mean they had lost people? It didn’t look like it from the smiles on both their faces. It looked like their missions had been successful.

“How did it go,” Loch asked, as they got closer.

“Good,” Drew replied. “Both Dungeons were successful runs.”

“Give me a bit to get settled,” Loch said, motioning to the new people behind him. “And then we can debrief.”

Drew nodded. Davis was ignoring Loch, focused on Harper.

Who wasn’t looking up at him, or at anyone. Loch gave her a worried look, that she either ignored or didn’t see. He hoped it was just that she hadn’t seen it. Davis took a step closer, expression turning to worry.

Harper walked past, not heading into the school, but moving toward the back. Drew turned, confused.

“It got a little rough,” Loch said, grasping Drew’s shoulder. “Give her some time.”

***

Harper sat on the small beach behind the school. The wind blew across Harvey Lake, making small waves on a lake that rarely had any. It was small, there had barely been any boat traffic, making it a very calm lake.

The beach, which was normally pretty busy with the Clan’s fishermen launching and returning, was thankfully empty. She could sit alone, not in peace, and stare out over the water. In her hand was a flat rock, Harper tempted to try and skip it across the water.

She had seen a larger ripple along the surface only fifty feet off shore. Most likely it was Unfey, the Dragon Turtle, which made her decide to not skip the rock. The Clan had a pretty good relationship with the giant turtle. They left him alone and he left the Clan alone. She didn’t want to tempt fate by accidently hitting him with a rock.

Would the turtle even notice?

She sighed, letting the rock fall to the ground, wrapping her arms around her knees.

“Hey,” a familiar voice said.

She didn’t look up as Davis sat down next to her.

“I figured you wanted to be alone,” he said, looking out over the water. “So I thought I’d come and be alone with you.”

Harper glanced over at him. He didn’t turn or smile, just looked out over the lake. She wanted to snap at him, tell him to go away. Yell that being alone didn’t mean having someone right there. But she didn’t, because having Davis there was starting to feel like a comfort.

He didn’t ask questions. Didn’t try to put an arm around her to hold her. He just sat there. His presence letting her know that she didn’t have to be alone. That there was someone there waiting for her when she was ready.

It reminded her of what her father used to do. There had been times when she’d been really upset and didn’t want to talk to anyone, didn’t want to listen to anyone. That no matter what they said, all reasonable it was, she didn’t want to hear it. Not then.

Those times, her father would just sit down on the floor in her room. Either next to her, against the bed, or the wall. Maybe not even looking at her. He’d just sit there, not saying anything, just letting her know that when she was ready, he’d be there for her.

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It was a comfort.

They sat like that for minutes, maybe even longer, it was so hard to tell time without a watch, before Harper was ready to talk.

“I killed someone,” she said, not looking at Davis, eyes out across the water. “Not a monster or something undead, but a person. An elf. He was threatening us but hadn’t attacked and I…,” she took a deep breath. “I Shadowskipped behind him, stabbing my tonfas through his chest.”

Harper lifted her hands, looking at them.

“It wasn’t self-defense. He hadn’t attacked. I just did it because he was probably going to attack,” she said, lowering her hands again. “It was a person. An elf, but a person.”

She lowered her head into her raised knees, wrapping her arms around them tighter.

“I killed a person.”

She raised her head, looking up at him. There were tears in her eyes, visible pain and fear.

“If I hadn’t done that, maybe Jenny would still be alive.”

Davis shifted closer, reaching an arm out. He wrapped it around Harper’s shoulder, pulling her tight against him.

“It was self-defense,” he said. “I heard the story from the others. That elf was going to attack and try to kill as many of our people as he could. Your actions surprised the elves, gave your father a couple seconds of reaction time, gave our people time to prepare.”

“But..”

“No buts,” Davis said, squeezing harder. “It was the right choice.”

“Jenny died…”

“Maybe she would have lived, maybe she wouldn’t have. If you hadn’t done it, maybe more would have died. There’s no way to know. You made a decision and it was the right one.”

“I don’t…”

“He is right,” a new voice said.

They both looked over their shoulders to see Elora Seedspear walking over.

“Forgive my listening in,” Elora started. “But I felt I needed to talk with you.” She walked over to the shore, stopping between Harper and the water, turning to look at the teen. “Young Master Davis is right,” she continued. “The Silver Bark Midwarden was going to attack when you killed him. It gave the Lord Lochlan time to get the initiative back. It is always best to fight with the initiative and not begin on the defensive.”

She turned to look out over the water.

“Yes, most often self-defense is in response to an attack. It is reactive, which puts you at an immediate disadvantage. But it does not need to be reactive. It can be proactive. If an enemy will threaten the ones you care about, taking out that enemy first is still done in defense.”

Harper thought about Elora’s words. There was a weird kind of logic to it. She could understand what the elf was getting at, what point she was trying to make. It was not something that Harper could fully accept. The proactive part made sense. But there were some negatives to that. What if peace could be found through negotiation? Wouldn’t attacking the enemy first just lead to more bloodshed and loss of lives? Wasn’t it best to try to negotiate for peace first?

Violence was the last answer. She had been taught that her whole life. History books, movies, almost all aspects of culture said that violence was the last resort. That being the proactive ones were wrong. It wasn’t a justification.

But that was the old world.

“I grew up in a world that had been part of the Connected System for centuries. This way of life is all that I know. This guilt you feel is something foreign to me and to anyone not new to the Connection. It is very much a kill or be killed world. One where might makes right. Your father is trying for something better. I do not know if he will succeed but I believe it is a worthy goal. That is why I follow him,” Elora said, locking gazes with Harper. “But striving for a better way does not mean backing down. When confronted with a known enemy, one you know would willingly and gratefully attack you and the ones you are sworn to protect, you use everything in your power to take out that threat. Swiftly. There is nothing wrong in being proactive.”

“What’s the difference,” Harper asked, seeing the slightly confused look on Elora’s face, she continued. “What is different between me being proactive and killing an enemy and that enemy being proactive and killing me?”

“Intent,” Elora said. “The enemy kills you for themselves. For their personal power. You kill the enemy not for yourself but to protect others. That is the difference.” She walked over, reaching down and grasping Harper’s shoulder before continuing to walk away. “And it is a large difference.”

Harper watched Elora leave for a bit, turning back to look out over the waters.

“Feel any better?,” Davis asked.

“A little,” Harper replied, sighing. “Maybe.”

***

They held a funeral for Jenny and the man from Josh’s team that had died. Their names were etched onto the stone that was placed in front of the cemetery. There were no bodies, those had been burned.

In a world where the dead regularly rose up from the graves, never stopping, it was an easy decision to burn and not bury bodies. But people still wanted something to mark the passing. A stone had been set up with all the names of those in the Clan that had died, in service to the Clan, etched into it. Most of the names were from the gaunt’s attack.

The mason had just finished with Jenny’s name. He stepped back, head bowed, moving behind the front line of the small gathering.

There weren’t many people. Joshua and his party were there, along with some of the other people from the group that had arrived with him. The rest was Loch and those that had partied with Jenny, fought alongside her, a couple others she had been friendly with. She had not spent much time mingling outside of those and it showed with who was there. Jenny had been a very private person, she had barely talked about her life before the Connection and Loch had never pried. If anyone else had known more, they didn’t say. Loch wished he had asked more, gotten to know her better.

She had stepped up for the Clan, willingly venturing out with him and getting involved in the higher Level fights that he did. She hadn’t complained or backed down. Jenny had wanted to protect the people of Clan Brady and gave up her life for it.

He had only known her for a couple of months. They had been intense months filled with danger and fighting. But he could have gotten to know her better.

Loch felt the guilt weighing on him. Just more pressure added to the immense load he was already carrying. There would be more. Not for the first time, Loch wished he hadn’t taken the responsibility for the Clan and other survivors. But he had and would continue to do so. More people like Jenny would die, more guilt.

He’d take that guilt if it meant more people were kept safe.