EVAN. LATE.

Evan’s head felt weird.

With a casual, practiced motion, Gramyre put one foot on the twitching corpse and pushed, using the extra leverage to pull the sword out of its flesh. The flames became ghostly, fading until Chris merely held a sword glowing with the same white light as the moon. There was no sign of any of the Beast’s fluids on the blade. The light made the silver threads tracing out the sigils on his warding mantle gleam, but the color of the leather was washed out. He wore hip lanterns, not ornate like his school ones, but larger ones with defensive silver inlay, sizable flames in each.

From where he knelt, panting, Evan stared at the sword. Surely it couldn’t be.

Chris scanned the area, a quick yet methodical examination of his surroundings, before his gaze came to rest on Evan.

The other boy began walking toward him, and as he came, he said, as casually as if they’d run into each other at the market, “Hey Evan. Nice night for a stroll.” He raised one eyebrow, easy enough to see in the light cast by the sword and the gas lamps. “Think your leg there is up to one?”

Evan blinked and looked down. His left leg, he realized, was soaked in thick liquid. There were splashes of it around, and a small pool soaking into the butt of his jeans as he sat there. He was bleeding. The Beast had done more than graze his hip as he’d dodged—it had sliced clean through his jeans and into the flesh over his hip without him even realizing it. Deep, by the looks of it. He hadn’t even felt it.

Also, he’d sat down at some point, which he didn’t remember doing.

“Shit,” he said, softly, feeling dizzy and vaguely nauseated.

“So what you doing out here, fool?” Chris asked as he reached Evan, an almost cartoonishly friendly smile and pleasant tone belying the insult. He swapped the sword from one hand to the other, then extended his left hand to Evan, presumably to help him up. Evan looked at the hand, and then looked at the sword. The hilt, while not the best lit or easiest to see through the, you know, hand holding it, appeared to be bone white wood. Or possibly just bone.

Evan’s head hurt. He stared at Chris’s outstretched hand, and for the first time, that which had been roiling in the darkness beneath his conscious mind all day bubbled to the surface, revealing or transforming into hot anger. “Hey, fuck you for real though!” he said, in not quite a shout, but not quite not one either. “None of us asked for you to, to, you know, sweep into town and get your, your fucking perfection all over everything, with your cool hair and your crazy eyes and your, like, fucking legendary sword! Fucking seriously, dude?! You’re holding Dyrnwyn right now! You wield Dyrnwyn?! How could you possibly have come across Dyrnwyn?!”

Evan smacked Chris’s hand away, and tried to push himself to his feet. He almost immediately collapsed back onto the ground, scraping his hands on the walk. Pain shot out from the wound in his hip for the first time, driving into his head and stepping the dizziness up a notch. “Interrobang?!” Evan spat it as if it were a curse, and felt sicker.

Chris’s smile stayed on his face for Evan’s first sentence, though it became significantly more brittle. As Evan kept half-shouting, his expression seemed to melt, until Evan said the word Dyrnwyn, at which point it collapsed completely. It flickered back for a second when Evan shouted ‘Interrobang’ but did not stick around. “Bloody beans, of course you recognize it,” Chris said when Evan gave him an opening, closing his eyes and rubbing his right temple with his left hand. Then, of all things, he sat down on the walk next to Evan.

Evan stared at him, taken aback. He could now see that his own blood was all over the place here, and Chris had just plopped down in some. “Uh. It’s freaking Dyrnwyn. They made a movie about Rhydderch Hael like eight years ago. It was called Whitehilt! That sword’s hilt is white! And it was on fire! It’s obviously Dyrnwyn!”

“Flopped at the box office though,” Chris said, his voice, his unfairly handsome face growing glum. “No one could say his name right, so Isleic-Common speakers who should have been the biggest fans boycotted instead. I’ve been hoping most people wouldn’t remember it.”

Evan opened his mouth to reply, but Chris cut him off. “Look, Evan, you’re losing blood here. I don’t know what sort of license you’re packing, but I bet it’s not for solo hunting. Certainly not without a warding mantle or charms or anything that I can see. And you need medical attention, more than I can provide.

“And you’re going to be facing some serious consequences for being out here picking fights with Beasts by yourself. There’s probably already someone on the way after that gunfire. I’m sorry my existence is so frustrating for you, but let me try and make amends. I’ll do my best to help you talk your way out of this.”

Evan closed his mouth, took a moment to acknowledge his position, and nodded.

“Cool,” Chris said. He laid the sword on the ground while at the same time digging out his phone. As he activated an app on the phone with his left hand, he pulled a small jar out of one of the pouches hanging from his belt and then a small metal vial out of a slot on said belt with his right hand. “Here,” he said. “That’s a lot of blood, and you’re slurring. Drink this, and if your wound is still bleeding, slap a bunch of that there salve on it. It’s going to hurt like an absolute bitch, but it’ll staunch the bleeding. Don’t be dainty, either, you’ve bled a lot already.”

Evan nodded again, took the vial, and drank all thirty whole milliliters of it. He immediately felt an intense burning pain in his hip, and the throbbing in his head swelled. He groaned and put his head down for who even knew how long.

After a while, the sense of dizziness faded, and he felt clear headed in a way he hadn’t realized he didn’t feel, even apart from the dizziness and nausea. It was enough to make him realize he was thrumming with adrenaline and also exhausted. His head still throbbed, but he wasn’t going to slur anymore, he didn’t think. After a bit more, the pain in his hip ceased. He realized he’d just drank a healing potion, which could easily have been fifty eggs or more. Five hundred tweeties. Five thousand gobblers.

“My eleven-nine is over there,” Evan said, pointing at it. “It got knocked it out of my hands. Please grab it.” Evan started to push himself up, and discovered that his hip still wasn’t going to support him for sure, and was, while not as bad as before, still bleeding.

So, Evan opened the salve jar, dug in, and layered a big daub of the alchemic contents over his wound. He yelped, the sound way too loud and shocked, as the wound flared into sensation, burning and freezing at the same time. He gritted his teeth, almost panting just because of the pain, but he slathered some more on. Chris watched him silently as he did.

Evan had to focus for literally several minutes on not being completely overwhelmed by the pain—at one point he thought he was going to black out, but he didn’t quite. Chris gave him time to do so. Eventually, Evan handed the jar of salve back. As Chris took it, he handed Evan the eleven nine. They each put away their respective possession, and Chris said, “I don’t know what I did to step on your toes, but I’m sorry I did it.” He paused, and not looking directly at Evan, asked, “Is it about Megan? I mean, she’s crazy gorgeous. I totally get it.”

Evan stared at him. “Yeah,” he nodded, in a tone intended to convey that it was obviously about Megan. “It’s about Megan. But it’s about you, and it’s about the world, too. I don’t know how to explain.” He paused. “I don’t know if you picked up on it, but we haven’t been... well...”

Chris was watching Evan patiently, so he kept trying. “Today was the first time we—me and Ryan and Angie, Ryan and Angie and I—really talked or hung out with Megan since the beginning of seventh grade.”

Chris’s jaw straight dropped. Evan gave him a bit, and he eventually said, “You must be pulling my leg.”

Evan shook his head. “Okay, you’re still pretty clueless. I can’t believe no one told you. No one mentioned the Exiles to you?”

“The Exiles?!” Chris managed, strangled.

“Yup. Angie, Ryan, and I were the Exiles.” Distant, the sound of sirens. They immediately began growing loud.

“What does that mean?” Chris asked. “That’s a wild thing to call one’s classmates!”

“What you’d think it means,” Evan said dully, as the sirens grew near. His head still throbbed. His neck and shoulders ached. “No one talked to us unless class forced them to, and even then they barely did. Well, a few people talked to us eventually, but not for the first year and a half or so.”

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Chris just seemed stunned. Then he started, and said, “Shit, they’re almost here.” He stood and picked his sword. “Well, it was clear you guys had shit to work out, but that sounds worse than I expected. I hope this’ll make some sort of sense, but I’ll have to wait.”

Chris glanced in the siren’s direction, and gently smacked Evan’s shoulder with the back of his hand. “Listen guy. I’ll tell you what. I’m going to need to do some fast talking here, and you’re going to have to go to the hospital. I won’t be going with you. I’ll meet you there and get you home, and on the way you can talk about this more if you’re feeling up to it. Please feel up to it.

“I’ma tell them that I brought you out with me, what with your amazing gunplay and such. We were patrolling, and we heard that gunshot. With your long legs, you ran ahead of me, and I briefly lost track of you, then caught up while you were shooting it, and couldn’t make it in time to keep it from hurting you. It knocked you against the window on the second pass.

“I’ll argue that I thought that one of my ill-fitting warding mantles would be worse than no mantle, which may or may not be true or convincing but it’s worth a try. You’re licensed and with me, so this kill will cover your hospital bills no problem. With any luck we won’t get fined right out of town.”

He finished speaking just in time. A moment later, the ambulance rounded the corner, all strobing light and screaming sirens. With it was another motortruck marked with the emblem of the Bounty Authority’s cleaners. Hopefully it wasn’t Evan’s mom.

Evan, still kinda light-headed, the pain from his hip filling up every corner of his body, nodded as people swarmed around them. His mom wasn’t there, he didn’t think.

RYAN. STUPID LATE.

Ryan was actively wondering if he was going to doze off before they heard from Chris when his phone rang, the match results theme from Beast Fighter II Ultra Turbo blaring out of his phone jerking Cali out of her fitful slumber. Angie, her head nestled in Ryan’s lap, didn’t so much as twitch. Cali’s eyes simply opened and darted to Ryan’s phone. Ryan, who had already had the phone in hand, immediately felt his breath speed up—it was Chris.

Ryan answered and said, “Ryan,” as quietly as he could and still be confident he’d be understood. He started trying to shift his lap out from under Angie’s head without bothering her. “Can you give me a sec,” he all but continued as a whisper, “Angie’s asleep.”

“Whatsat?!” Angie yelped as she lurched upright, her eyes wild, surprising Ryan so much he nearly fell off the couch. She toppled back over onto her other side, immediately squeezing her eyes shut. “Iiimup!” she sort of chirped, then she slurred out, “Speaker?” She squinted up at Ryan even though the room was dim, the only lights from the TV and the hall.

“Um?” Chris said.

“You mind if I put you on speaker?” Ryan asked after gathering himself.

“No prob,” Chris said, and Ryan felt a hint of relief.

Ryan activated speaker and said, “On.”

“Evan’s going to be fine,” Chris said to all three of them.

Going to be? Ryan would have sworn his heart actually skipped a beat.

Angie’s mostly closed eyes shot open. Cali sat bolt upright, terror writ on her face.

Chris said, “His hip got caught by a claw. It’s a respectable flesh wound, but nothing he won’t recover from. I just got him shipped off to the hospital.”

“What?” Angie managed to ask, her voice a gulp.

“Your boy Evan stumbled upon a Menace-class—” the phone said in Chris’s voice, provoking literal gasps from all three of them—a Menace-class was exactly that, a serious menace. Chris continued, “—immediately after it had killed someone. He was flipping amazing.” He went on to tell them a short tale in which Evan started shooting up a nasty Beast just as Chris rounded a corner to witness it. Evan hurt it pretty good, but not quite enough.

Chris’s voice took on a bemused, almost awed tone as he said, “I think it still would have gotten him, but then the Craziest. Thing. Happened. The night had been pretty still up to that point, but just as the Beast was about to overrun him there were these… just, just enormous gusts of wind that came out of fucking nowhere. In two different directions. At the same time! I could tell it was wind because it caught and bent all the trees in the lane, and it just, you know, sounded like wind. But that’s not how wind works!

“The one gust picked Evan up off his fucking feet and flung him out of the Beast’s path, right into the windows of the nearby store, and, a second later, the other gust caught the Beast from behind and flipped it completely over and blew it a good fifteen meters down the street toward me. Then the air just went still again.” There was a moment’s pause, and Ryan was about to say something when Chris said, “It was the wildest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Angie giggled sleepily, the news that Evan was basically alright having sunk into them all at this point. “That was me. Tell him I’m sorry.”

There was silence for a moment, then, with the tone of a man who thinks he must have misheard, Chris said, “That was… you?”

“I was scared,” Angie said, her voice smaller than normal. Ryan moved the phone closer to her. “I summoned this storm owl I met last Spirit’s Feast and asked her to help keep Evan safe. I wish she hadn’t blown him into a window, but at least he didn’t get ripped apart by a Menace-class Beast. I assume it was Dens-i-glass and that Evan hasn’t been cut to shreds by shards of a window?”

“Yeah, his head bounced off it pretty good, but he didn’t go through the window or anything like that,” Chris replied, sounding both bemused and relieved. “Well, I’m glad to have an explanation for that, ‘cause it was pretty surreal and I really didn’t know… what was going on, I guess. Evan was pretty out of it too, so we didn’t really get a chance to discuss it. You uh. You can summon spirits, huh? That’s pretty cool!”

“It was my first time trying it for anything but the pettiest of spirits, but in principle it’s not that hard,” Angie said. “What’s the plan now? Should we… go to the hospital?”

“I don’t think he was hurt that bad anymore,” Chris replied, making all three of their breathing seize up. “I gave him a healing potion and the paramedics didn’t seem too worried once they looked at him. I think they’ll probably patch him up and try and send him home with a militia escort. I was going to go meet him there and take him off their hands instead, so I’ll get him home safe. Can you send me his address so I don’t have to make him navigate for me?”

“Yeah,” Ryan replied, with a second wave of relief over the healing potion. “Soon as we hang up. We’ll see you when you get here.” Evan was fine. Ryan wanted to laugh, or maybe cry, in relief.

There was a momentary pause, then Chris said. “It’s after midnight. Where are you? What’s going on?”

Ryan did laugh then, a lot, with Angie and Cali joining in. “Evan’s family and I live together in an old boarding house,” Ryan said once he got over it. “Angie’s over here right now too. We’re adults now, after all.”

“Suuuure,” Chris said, with a sort of wonder in his tone. “I guess we are…”

“We are,” Angie replied, then yawned.

“You guys are a trip!” Chris replied in turn, an undercurrent of laughter in his voice. “I’m looking forward to getting to know y’all better!”

Ryan found himself grinning. Angie, too, smiled widely, if sleepily. She looked like she was about to nod off again—that summoning had taken it out of her. She’d devoured a bag of Cheesters and passed out as soon as she’d come inside afterwards. Cali looked like she didn’t really believe this was happening. Ryan replied, “It’s the same for us, Ser Gramyre.”

Chris laughed, and then, in the tone of a man having an epiphany, he said, “Hey, Megan’s not there, is she?”

“Alas no,” Ryan said, grinning even wider. “We parted ways with Megan this evening before I called the first time. She probably would have said something by now.”

“Fair,” Chris said. “I should figure out how to get to the hospital. Haven’t been yet. I guess, well, I’ll see you later?”

“If you bring Evan home you will,” Ryan said, grinning still.

“Cool. Later,” the new boy said, and hung up.

“I still can’t believe you guys are suddenly friends with a fucking Light Bearer, man,” Cali said, shaking her head. “That’s so wild. What’s even going on with your lives?”

“Time will tell,” Ryan said, looking at Cali. “Go back to sleep while you have time, you’re going to be cranky tomorrow already.” As he spoke, Angie dropped her head back into Ryan’s lap, already breathing the shallow breaths of sleep. Ryan went back to what he’d been reading on his phone.

Cali, despite looking sleepy, gave Angie a disbelieving glance, rolled her eyes at Ryan, said, “Okay ‘Dad,’” and started watching the late night programming Ryan had been mostly ignoring, her expression resolute. Within a couple minutes her eyes slipped closed and her head tilted backward. Ryan really let his smirk run wild as he continued reading.