It felt surreal. Impossible. He’d been woken by a guard early that morning, and he’d had barely enough time to dress up before the grim-faced man lead him through Leeds. Except the destination wasn’t the keep; it was the medic tent.

That was how he wound up standing there, alone except for the doctor, over the corpse of someone he’d come to know fairly well over the past month and a half. It hadn’t been a friendship – it was more of a partnership of convenience – but Wesley had been a likeable man, even if he was too quick to trust and invest his loyalty in people.

His already pale skin was devoid of life, his eyes shut forevermore as his soul went to where souls went after death.

“When?”

“Not even thirty minutes ago, Florian. I’m so sorry.” The doctor reached up to lay a hand on his shoulder. “I found him like this. It looks like it was an easy death.”

That’s a pretty shitty condolence prize, Florian thought. He offered up a quick prayer, something he hadn’t done in quite a long time. Florian wasn’t sure anyone would answer, but he hoped that Wesley would find rest and reprieve from the hell that Earth had become.

The doctor left him to attend to another person, this one a wounded Warrior from the sounds of it. Left truly alone, Florian’s thoughts turned to magic. In a way, they were all dabbling in something they understood very little about. There was no rhyme or reason to why it functioned the way it did, and now that Florian thought about it, he wasn’t sure how people had only just begun to figure this out now.

He ground his teeth in frustration. Theo knew more about everything, but he shared nothing. It was intentional, Florian knew, to cripple anyone who tried to threaten Theo’s exalted position. Fuck.

Florian paced around the rest of the tent, finding it far emptier than usual. It looked like the monsters had truly backed off for now. He wanted to hope that maybe they’d finally killed all of them, but after what the world had gone through, he found it very, very hard to hold on to that hope.

Circling back to Wesley, Florian felt that the man had deserved more in life. He’d worked harder than almost anyone, just to support Jones. He needed to tell Jones, that whiny, would-be lordling.

As it were, one of Jones’ men came up to him, inviting Florian to follow him back to the keep to meet with Jones himself. A part of him – a large part of him – was scared by whatever this development meant. Meetings with Jones, historically, had never boded well for him. But an even larger part of him was furious, and so he went along without a single question, content to bottle his frustration until he could unleash it on Jones.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

The portly, red-haired man waited for him in the dining room, a nearly empty bottle of wine in front of him. “Sit,” Jones said, indicating the seat next to him.

Florian did so, taking the offered wine but not drinking from it. “Jones. Do you realize that Wesley died trying to prove himself helpful to you? That all he wanted was to support you?”

“I know. Wesley was a good man, and I remember when he asked if he could learn magic,” Jones slurred his words, clearly having had more to drink than Florian realized. “He was a good man, you know. Before all this, he was on night-duty at my store.”

“It was a big, big store. We had lots of people. But Wesley was always the most enthusiastic. He was a guard until he wanted to learn magic,” Jones stared at Florian in a weird, off-focus kind of way. “I let him. I figured he’d learn just fine.”

“And now he’s dead,” Florian finished.

“And he’s dead,” Jones agreed.

The pair sat in silence, neither taking a sip of their drink nor eating the vast amounts of food that had been laid out in front of them. Much of the anger Florian had come in with dissipated with Jones’ remorse, the sorrowful atmosphere overtaking any other emotion. And for a while, it was a companionable silence, both forgetting whatever gripes they had with the other.

But the silence had to be broken at some point. Jones, clearly not at 100%, stood to leave when he stumbled as his rear left his chair. A guard ran up to the table, catching the man before he fell. Jones regarded the man with a glare, shuffling over to Florian.

“Traders leave tomorrow morning. Please, don’t die too.” A single tear rolled down the older man’s cheek. Florian was caught completely off-guard, and by the time he could formulate some kind of response, Jones was long gone.

In any event, that left him with just over a day to get everything prepared for the journey. It was the kind of short notice that would stress anyone out, but Florian knew that Jones would supply whatever he needed. He’d need to assemble some kind of backpack with food and water, along with more comfortable travel clothes. Only an idiot would travel any distance wearing his robes, much less if their goal was to protect someone. The flowing mass of cloth would be a hindrance in the event of a fight.

Florian left the dining hall without eating anything, but feeling much lighter than he had felt an hour prior. It was easier now to shake away the twin specters that floated around in his thoughts, and he went to the classroom knowing that he would have to be the one to relay the news to the disciples.

But when he opened the door, the somber expressions on everyone’s face told him that they already knew. No one dared meditate for long, and much of the day passed by with the people around him in conversation. Florian didn’t mind. Today, he didn’t think he’d be able to do much more than pack his bag himself.

Because at the end of the day, he knew that Wesley’s death lay squarely on his shoulders.