Chapter 23: The Will of the Favored

Before speaking, Zach took a moment to regard the siblings who had plummeted down here with him in this inescapable dungeon. Even with them sitting together directly across from him, it still wasn’t easy for him to believe that they were actually here. How had they found this place? Why were they so unsurprised to see him here? In fact, the only thing that seemed to have genuinely shocked either one of them was the existence of the talking cat, who was now asleep in Lienne’s lap. At least, that was until the conversation began. Once he actually began speaking, the level of disbelief among all three of them began to rise.

“I guess my first question,” Zach said, taking a brief moment to look each one of them in their eyes, “is how you guys found this place, and why you’re not more shocked. I mean, this is a dungeon! How are you taking this so in stride?”

At this, both Lienne and Rian looked at one another as though the question itself was absurd to them. Zach wasn’t sure why. To him, it seemed like the most reasonable thing to ask right off the bat. “We found this place…the same way you did, probably,” she said. Though her voice was soft and cordial, there was a note of confusion in the way she spoke—as though she couldn’t understand why Zach would even ask such a question.

“The same way I did?” Zach replied, pointing a finger at himself. “Wait, you mean with Frog Snax?”

Once again, the two siblings exchanged a mystified glance. “What?” Rian asked. He’d laid his sword and shield down on the floor to the right of where he sat as though it enabled him to be a bit more comfortable while in a seated position. His sister had also set down her staff.

“You know, Frog Snax. They’re these—”

“I know what they are,” Rian shot in. “I just don’t see what they have to do with…okay, this is getting stranger by the second.”

Zach laughed. “I feel the same way. You guys are confusing the hell out of me.”

“We’re confusing you?” Lienne asked, sounding baffled.

Fluffles, who still looked to be napping, somehow muttered, “Fluffles confused too,” in a sleepy whisper. The cat was clearly asleep, so Zach had to wonder if his words were even in reply to the actual conversation or just him repeating something in his dreams.

Rian folded his arms and twisted his lips. “I thought the reason you were so surprised to see us was maybe because you didn’t think you’d ever run into others like you, but now I’m wondering if it’s something else.”

“Others like me?”

“Adventurers trying to make the cut.”

“Trying to make the cut?”

Rian leaned in closer. “Are you messing with me?”

Frustrated, Zach threw out his palms. “No! Why would I be? I feel like we’re getting nowhere here. It seems like the core of it is that I’m surprised that you’re not surprised, and you’re surprised that I’m surprised that you aren’t. Maybe we should both just start from the beginning. Because, from my perspective, I came down here with my cat to a place no one should’ve known existed, and then you guys fell down acting like you were looking for it.”

Rian nodded. “Maybe we should back way, way up. Because everything you just said only makes me more confused.”

“Yeah, and I don’t know how that’s possible.”

“And I don’t know how you don’t know how that’s possible,” Lienne fired in.

“So then here’s a simple question,” Zach began, “why aren’t you surprised?”

“About what?" Rian asked.

Zach motioned with his hands, waving them around himself. “About this. About all of this.”

“Why would we be surprised? We’re here for the same reason you are.”

Zach laughed. “Somehow I really doubt that.”

“Huh?”

“I said I doubt you’re here for the same reason that—”

“You’re trying to reach level 10 so you can join a guild, right?” Rian asked.

Zach widened his eyes. “Wait, how do you know that? Did someone tell you about me? Who are you two? How do you know I’m here to—?”

“Whoah, stop it a second,” Rian said, holding out his palm. “Why would we know anything about you? You’re making me so confused that it hurts. Look, we’re here for the same reason as you. We also want to join a guild.”

“By…by getting level 10?” Zach asked.

Lienne narrowed her eyes at him. “Obviously.”

This was becoming too much to process at once. Zach felt like he was trying to solve a puzzle and three-quarters of the pieces were missing. “That’s just oddly specific,” he said to them. “That you have to do the same thing I do.”

“What?” Rian asked, his tone higher in pitch. “Kid, we’re the same as you. We’re just trying to get through the Rites of Initiation.”

“The what?”

“Okay, you’re messing with me.”

“I’m not!” Zach snapped angrily. Then, muttering a brief apology for losing his cool, he continued, “I’m not. I’m just so damn…I don’t know what’s going on.”

“You don’t?” Rian said. He slapped his palm down against the black marble. “I don’t think I’ve ever been this confused before. I’m not even convinced you’re not messing with me or something.”

“I don’t…I don’t think he is,” Lienne said. She sounded compassionate if not somewhat alarmed. “Zach, uh, you…I think the confusion between us is that we’re not sure how…I’m not sure how to phrase this. I guess me and my brother are wondering why you’re acting like you don’t know anything.”

“Because I don’t!” he shouted at them, throwing up his hands as he spoke. Once again, he had to apologize for the emotional outburst. Then, more calmly and slowly, he said, “I don’t know anything.”

“But that’s…” Lienne’s words trailed off as though she weren’t sure what to say. Then her brother spoke in her stead.

“I think what we’re getting at, Zach, is that we don’t understand how you can be in the same situation as us and not know what’s going on.”

Zach couldn’t help but get just a bit defensive at the presumptuous way Rian had spoken to him. “With all due respect, I don’t see how you can just assume we’re in the same situation.”

“Oh really?”

“Well, yeah.”

“So let me get this straight. You’re not someone who was wandering around somewhere someday—maybe a forest, maybe a lake, or an old mine shaft—or wherever—when you suddenly stumbled into a pack of mobs that you couldn’t believe existed, which you then attacked, leveled up off of, and later, you miraculously stumbled into a member of an adventurer guild who’d been looking for you?”

Zach actually trembled as the boy spoke. “Holy shit,” he said with a gasp. For some reason, his surprise only increased their own. That had been spot on. Well, except the last part. Mr. Oren hadn’t been looking for him. But even still!

“How did you know that?”

“Because that’s how it always happens. We’re just like you. My sister and I, I mean. We were born in a really poor neighborhood in the city in Shadowfall Coast. We ran away from home after our parents split, and one day, while we were walking through the woods near Serpent’s Bite northwest of the city, we found a hatch that had been covered up by some leaves right in the middle of nowhere. We opened it, and there was like this ladder, right? So uh, so we climbed down—and then there were mobs.”

“Then what?” Zach asked.

“Then,” Rian continued, “Just like you, we found out we had the Will of the Favored, and our sponsor—”

“Wait, time out,” Zach said. “I don’t mean to interrupt you, it’s just these words you’re using. Will of the Favored? Sponsor?”

Lienne shifted uncomfortably, causing Fluffles to moan in her lap. At the same time, Rian rubbed his eyes as if frustrated. “See, this is why we think you’re messing with us? If you’re gonna act like you don’t know what we’re—”

“I don’t know!” Zach shouted. “Why is that so hard to believe? That I just don’t know what you know.”

“Because!” Rian shouted back at him, now seemingly just as heated. “How is it even possible for you to be here if you don’t know? How are we even having this conversation?”

“I feel like you’re trying to confuse me on purpose,” Zach said.

“Believe me, that’s how I feel right now.” With a long, drawn-out sigh, he added, “I’m really not trying to be mean to you, Zach, but it seems like we have very similar experiences. You found a spawn, right?”

“Me…me and my gir…my friend, yeah.”

“And an adventurer from one of the guilds found you, right?”

“Well, I kind of went to him.”

Rian shrugged. “Same difference. And then what?”

“He gave me some gold.”

“Starter gold, right?”

One more amazed, Zach nodded. “That’s right. That’s what he called it.”

“Of course he did. Like I said, we’re the same. Just like you, we found a spawn, met someone from one of the guilds, got sent to the induction, learned about the various properties of levels, got our ass handed to us in weapons training, then just like you, we got given our clue and spent two months figuring out how to get here.”

Zach slapped both his palms down on the marble so hard he hurt his hands. “Okay! That’s it!” he said excitedly.

“Wh-what’s it?” both Lienne and Rian said at once.

“That’s why I’m so Gods-damned confused.” He snapped his fingers. “I didn’t do any of that.”

“Any of what?”

“Everything you just said.”

“Zach,” Lienne said softly, “can you be more specific?”

“Everything you just said.”

“Everything we just…” Rian lowered his eyes a moment. “You mean like finding a spawn?”

“Err, sorry, that I did.”

“Meeting someone from one of the adventurer guilds—you know, your sponsor.”

“Okay, so that I did too.”

Rian leaned in closer, narrowing his eyes. “Learned about the various properties of leveling?”

“Nope,” Zach said.

“No what?”

“Never heard about that.”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s not bullshit,” he replied, trying his best not to become angered. “Or that other stuff you said. The induction, the weapons thing—although, I did learn how to use a sword from my cat. It’s a long story. But I never…I mean you said something about a clue?”

“Of course,” Rian said. “How else would you even be here without it?”

Zach shrugged. “I used Frog Snax.”

“You’re…” He turned to look at his sister. “He’s messing with us, right? He can’t be serious.”

Lienne shook her head. “I don’t think he is, Rian. I think he’s being very serious.”

“Of course I am!” Zach said, passion entering his voice. “You know what? This is still getting us nowhere. Why don’t I just tell you guys everything that happened for me to be here right now. Then maybe you’ll finally believe me.”

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“Please do,” Lienne said. “It’s probably what we should’ve done from the start.”

For the next thirty minutes, Zach recounted to these two strangers everything that’d happened from the moment he and Kalana had fallen through the street and into the underground cavern below the Leviathan River. He didn’t know if it was wise to trust these two with his secrets. He didn’t know if he was making a tremendous mistake. But now that he finally had the opportunity to tell someone who wasn’t a cat, it bled out of him like an infected wound that desperately needed healing.

Not once did they interrupt him as he spoke, even though he could tell by the absolutely awestruck expressions on their faces, as well as the constant gasps, that they were mortified at parts of it. All at once, the pain of his father’s death returned, as his eyes dampened while he recalled the way his body had been so badly mangled. This had been the only part of the tale where they had spoken, and it hadn’t been to interrupt him, either.

“I’m so sorry,” Lienne had whispered.

“Royal Rose shitheads,” Rian had muttered angrily.

The more Zach spoke, the more wide-eyed and stunned the two became. By far, the parts that seemed to both energize and rattle them the most were when he’d recounted his run-in with Varsh, the way he’d used Frog Snax to find this place, and the fact that Mr. Oren had sent him away without telling him a Gods-damned thing about what he should do next. Even more so than the parts about Varsh and Seraphina, that last one had seemed to have the biggest impact.”

“So let me get this straight,” Lienne said after he had finally finished speaking, almost sounding disgusted. “He didn’t tell you anything, Zach? Other than what his friend told you about exertion abilities.”

“That’s right,” Zach confirmed. “He didn’t tell me shit. I just packed up and left.”

“This is just unbelievable. This isn’t…this isn’t how we do things. You’re not supposed to just…I mean do you even know what a tank is?”

“Well, obviously,” Zach said with a chuckle. “I’m not an idiot. I took history. It’s an armored vehicle that—”

“No, no,” Lienne said, cutting him off. She pointed to her brother. “He’s a tank.”

Zach squinted his eyes skeptically. “Say what now?”

“Yeah, he doesn’t know anything,” Rian said, breathing out a sigh. “Okay, I’m…I’m beside myself right now. I am so pissed off on your behalf you can’t even imagine it.”

“Why?”

“Because you don’t know anything. And I’m really sorry I gave you so much shit before. I just…it’s almost…I’m not even sure I can understand how he got away with this.”

“Who, Mr. Oren?”

“Yes.”

“It’s an elite guild thing.”

“Elites,” Rian said, sticking out his tongue as though the word was poison. “I can’t stand them.”

“That’s what I thought at first. But he was right about me. I really do crave adventure. I was pissed at first about getting ditched, but I woke up the next day and I couldn’t wait to start.”

“Well, obviously,” Rian said, “you don’t have the Will of the Favored for no reason.”

“The what?”

He made a fist and rested his chin on it a moment, and then both he and his sister regarded him with a bizarre combination of sympathy and compassion. “Do you even know why any of this happened to you at all?”

“Meaning what?”

“Like, the reason you found a spawn in the first place?”

“I was lucky,” he said.

“No. It’s because of a buff you have.”

“A what?”

Once more, he sighed. “Right. You don’t know what that is because someone didn’t bother to tell you anything. Okay. Do you remember when you were telling me the part about how you used that man’s lab coat ability?”

Zach nodded. “Yeah, sure. For a few minutes, it made me way harder to hurt.”

“Okay, so, when we talk about buffs, we mean effects that are on you that change you in some way for the better, but usually temporarily.”

“Ah, okay. That makes sense.”

Lienne pointed in his direction, and Zach traced her fingers with his eyes. It looked like she was pointing to something above him—his forehead. “What kind of sight does your helm have? Or wait, do you even know what—”

“Ah, that I figured out on my own,” Zach said, somewhat proudly. “My helm has basic sight. Why?”

“Here,” Lienne said, taking off her black, curved steeple hat. “Put this on for a second. This has detailed sight.”

Zach shrugged and then went to place the hat on his head. He paused as both Lienne and her brother both yelped, half jumped up from a sitting position, and reached out towards him, yelling at him to take off his bandana first. “Oh, right,” Zach said with an embarrassed laugh. He untied his bandana and then placed it on the floor. “I almost forgot about that.”

Fluffles meowed groggily, as the motion caused him to roll off Lienne’s lap. “Why Fluffles get…” he trailed off back to sleep on the floor, clearly too tired to finish whatever it had been that he was about to say.

With the steeple hat on his head, Zach opened his mouth to ask what he should be looking for, but then he closed it as he found it on his own. In the very top-left corner of his vision, almost, but not quite out of sight, he could see what looked like a symbol of a golden hand inside of a box. It almost reminded him of his equipment in that it looked like a slot that had been filled, only there were no other empty boxes next to it. He also realized that if he lifted his head up and turned it to the left, he could see it more clearly.

“Touch it,” Lienne said.

Zach nodded. Then he reached out, and pressed the spot in the air where the image had appeared. Words popped up beneath it.

Will of the Favored

User is blessed with an adventuring spirit.

Duration: life

“What the hell is this?”

“It’s a buff,” Lienne answered. “But…not a usual one. Here, this is what they usually look like.”

She got up off the floor and came to a stand before him. Then she leaned down and grabbed her staff. With two hands, she tapped it against the ground, and she muttered something under her breath he couldn’t hear. A moment later, Zach flinched, startled, as a deep rumbling sound came from everywhere around him; what looked like millions of particles of dirt began falling over his head or body, almost to the extent that he became covered from head to toe in it. But fewer than three seconds later, every last dirt particle vanished without a single trace left in their wake.

“Now check your buffs,” she said.

Zach looked up and to his left. Now, to the right of the image of a golden hand was a brown image of a shield with a sparkle of light in the middle of it. Reaching out, Zach touched it.

Lesser Enchantment of Fortification

Increases the user’s armor by 5.

Duration: 29 minutes, 24 seconds

Even as he stared at it, he could see the timer ticking down. “Wow,” he whispered. “That’s awesome.”

“It is, right?” Lienne said with a cheerful laugh. She held out her hand, and Zach removed the hat from his head and returned it to her. Then he re-equipped his own bandana that he’d gotten off one of the Skelly Grunts downstairs.

“So what does it do?” Zach asked. “That buff.”

At this, both she and her brother became more animated, excited. “No one really knows,” Rian said. “We don’t know how we got it. We don’t know why we got it. We don’t know who gave it to us. The only thing we seem to know is that everyone who has it will eventually find a spawn. And when they do, if they attack and kill it, someone from an adventuring guild will find and induct them—if they choose. If they don’t attack the spawn, they lose the buff. If they decline the induction, they lose the buff. If they end up seizing territory or becoming political…well, they lose the buff.”

“Does it do anything else?”

Rian looked at his sister, and both exchanged a brief, uncertain glance. “We’re…not sure,” she said. “I don’t know if the guilds know more. But all we know is that it can be used to identify one another. Once you’ve joined a guild, you can see who has the buff active and who doesn’t. It’s part of the reason we were able to find this place.”

Zach raised his finger. “Ah, about that. How did you find this place? You said something about a clue?”

“Oh, right,” Rian said, tapping his chin. “So, after we learned the basics of leveling and stats, we were given a clue about how to find spawn points. Not this place in particular, but spawn points in general.”

“What was it?” Zach asked, becoming incredibly interested.

“We were told to seek the temple of knowledge that has withstood the test of time in even the lowest of cities. It was a riddle. It took me and Lienne a bit to figure it out, but we realized it was referring to—”

“The grand libraries,” Zach said, to which both of them widened their eyes.

“Wow, that’s right. How did you…?”

“I’m pretty good at riddles,” he replied, trying not to sound boastful or arrogant. In truth, he’d known what they were referring to right away. He had always been fascinated by the grand libraries, or more specifically, the fact that every single city in the entire world—in all eight continents—had one of them. Even the Gnomes had a grand library in each of their cities.

“So,” Zach asked, “do the libraries tell you where all the hidden spawn points are?”

“Not…quite,” Lienne said. “I mean, to begin with, no one even really knows where they all are. There are new ones being discovered all the time. But the libraries contain clues that can be pieced together for those who have Will of the Favored. We’re allowed to access a special section containing thousands of old books.”

“Allowed?”

She smiled and pointed at him. “You’re clever. Allowed by the head librarian, who in every city—as far as we know—is someone from an adventure guild.”

“Whoah,” Zach said under his breath.

The two laughed as though hearing his surprised vocalization. “They’re cool people, too,” Rian said. “Like, they can’t really tell us anything or do the work for us, but they do give little tiny hints and suggestions if they see we’re getting way off course so we don’t spend weeks going down rabbit holes with no results. Actually, it would’ve taken us a year to find this place without our librarian’s clever little criticisms and quips. Even still, it took us two whole months to piece this together. Hey, when we set out to find our next spawn, you should come with us. We’ll show you the process of figuring it out.”

Zach almost—almost—accepted their offer immediately, which was a surprise to even himself, as in that short moment, he’d forgotten all about the GSG and what he was trying to accomplish. He actually felt guilty for how badly he wanted to go with them. But he was supposed to join the GSG, right? And Kalana. He needed to be with her. So why did such a strong part of him want to go running off to some library to find secret spawn points?

“Can I ask you something, Lienne?”

“Sure!”

“What did you mean when you said your brother was a tank?”

At this, her brother patted himself hard on his leather brigandine. “I aggro mobs and take hits so you don’t have to by using taunt.”

“Taunt…” Zach’s eyebrows rose. “Is that what made me hate you so much when we were fighting?”

“Hah. Yeah, eh, sorry about that.”

“That’s an amazing ability. So…so you try to get mobs to attack you? Like, on purpose?”

“Better me than our casters or DPS.”

“Your what?” Zach asked, as more bizarre words and terms he didn’t recognize were casually brought up in this conversation.

Rian reached over and patted him on the shoulder. “You’ve got a lot to learn. And I’ll tell you what: my sis and I’ll teach you everything you should’ve already learned.”

“How?”

He shrugged. “Well, why not join our party? It seems we’re here for the same reason, right?”

At this, Zach laughed and nodded. He also felt honored in a strange sort of way. He was so used to not being wanted that the fact he’d been asked to join them was almost overwhelming. His confidence and self-esteem had really taken a one-two hit, first from the beating Varsh had given him, and then from his rejection at the hands of Mr. Oren.

“So, you want in?” Rian asked.

“Hell yeah I do. That sounds fun. But…oh, do you guys know about the boss-key thing?”

“Boss-key thing?”

He briefly explained it to them. Neither seemed all that alarmed. In fact, they only seemed even more eager to get started. “There’s a lot you don’t know, and it’s too much to go over at once, but we’ll try to fill you in as things become relevant,” Rian said. “When we start fighting, we’ll go over the roles.”

“Roles? You mean like you being a tank?”

“Yeah.”

“About that, can I just ask you one quick question?”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“Did you pick your role, or…?”

“No. When we level-up, we bring out our inner strength, and that’s how we know what we’re destined to be—at least most of the time, anyway. The vast majority of people have easily defined roles. Other times…not so much. In my case…”

In what Zach took to be a tremendous sign of trust, Rian tapped four times on his right shoulder, bringing out his stats. Following just a second or two behind her brother, Lienne then did the same.

Rian Astafort: Level 6

(0/400xp)

Armor Bonus: 35

3 strength

3 dexterity

14 constitution

3 intelligence

2 speed

4 luck

Lienne Astafort: Level 6

(0/400xp)

Armor Bonus: 8

1 strength

8 dexterity

3 constitution

15 intelligence

1 speed

1 luck

“You see?” Rian asked, as Zach nodded along. “I have really high constitution. Now, obviously my gear is increasing that a bit, but the point is that I was born to have high constitution. I can take a whole lot of damage, and I can prevent even more. So I’m naturally a tank.”

“And I,” Lienne said, picking up from where he’d left off, “am a natural caster, also sometimes called a mage. I acquire new spells fairly often and my intelligence keeps increasing when I level up. Not so much my other stats, though—well, except dex, which helps with casting speed and the speed that certain spells move after being casted.”

“I see,” Zach whispered. Then, not wanting to be the only one unwilling to share, he showed his own stats.

Zachys Calador: Level 4

(25/200xp)

Armor Bonus: 11

4 strength

4 dexterity

4 constitution

1 intelligence

3 speed

1 luck

“What would I be?” he asked, genuinely wanting to know.

Rian tapped his chin a moment, then looked at his sister. Both nodded in agreement at the same time, and both spoke the same word at the same time as well. “Bruiser,” they both said.

“Bruiser?”

“Non-tank, melee DPS.”

“DPS?”

“It means damage per second. It’s basically a way of saying how much damage you can dish out to a mob each second. By the way, most of these terms mean nothing to the political guilds. They don’t fight in the wild like we do, which is why we’ve devised these terms, systems, roles, and strategies to help optimize our chances of survival.”

Rian got up, stretched, and then picked up his sword and shield, returning it to his back. Then Lienne followed in suit, grabbing her staff. Zach also retrieved his sword and got back up. Fluffles continued to snooze away, clearly exhausted from all the running around they’d done together. Come to think of it, cats slept way more than humans did. The poor guy must’ve been so tired.

Rian took several steps towards the area leading to the stairs, then asked, “How many floors is this place, anyway?”

“Fifty,” Zach answered.

He gawked. “Whoah, really?”

“Yeah. How many do you think we can do?”

A devilish grin worked its way onto his lips. “The responsible number to give you is 10, but…you know damn well you want to try all 50.”

“I do,” Zach admitted with a laugh. “Hey, I think there’s a town not far from here. We should do the first 10 and go to the pub after this. We can have a kick-ass dinner and come back immediately tomorrow morning so we can clear more floors.”

“Sounds awesome,” Lienne said, bumping shoulders with him in a way that seemed just a bit too flirtatious. Zach tried to ignore it. There were certain things he just couldn’t allow himself to feel without a wave of guilt that would inevitably follow behind them.

“So, Zach,” Rian said, “are you ready to get started?”

“Technically, I already had before you guys fell down. So yeah, I’m ready to continue.”

“All right, then. Let’s see what this so-called Catacombs of Yorna is all about.”

“Wait, is that what it’s called?”

“Yep,” Lienne said, answering for her brother.

The three of them shared a chuckle and then made their way to the stairs. As they ventured down, ready to begin the plunge into this mysterious place Rian had called the “Catacombs of Yorna,” Zach paused while they were halfway down, causing the two siblings to pause as well.

“Can I just ask you guys one last question?”

“Sure, go ahead,” Lienne said.

“Another reason why I was surprised you guys weren’t surprised is because dungeons are supposed to have been wiped out. Are there more of them out there like this?”

At this, Rian grinned. “Actually, Z, almost all the dungeons still exist.”

Zach coughed out a gasp. “What? Seriously?”

“Yep. Though, that’s only in a matter of speaking. From some perspectives, you might say they’re gone.”

“Huh?”

Rian pointed to the area around them, then pointed to Zach. “As far as most of the world is concerned—even the so-called ‘guilds’ you see on TV—these places might as well not exist, because they can’t come here.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean literally that: they can’t come here. Hundreds of years ago, something happened, and I’m not sure what, but for whatever reason, only the people who have the buff that we have become able to enter dungeons. No one else can. Not even the political guilds.”

Zach wasn’t sure what to say in response to that, because he still didn’t understand why or how that could even be. So instead, he said nothing at all, content to follow his new friends down the stairs and up to the narrow passageway, beyond which lay a skeleton waiting to ambush the first person who walked through. Zach warned Rian, and he nodded.

“Everyone ready?” he asked.

“I’m good to go,” Zach said.

“Ready,” Lienne said.

With that, Rian, with what was objectively a great difficulty, began squeezing his larger frame into the narrow hole in the rock wall that formed the tight-fitting passageway. Zach went in after him, and Lienne followed last.

It would be interesting for once to fight with people who had his back. Honestly, Zach thought he could maybe get used to this.