Sil sat stiffly in a seat nearby. Emma still refused to meet his eyes - not that he could blame her - and he had yet to come to terms with the existence of the two Favored sitting across from him. Real Favored. Of course, he supposed he was a real Favored, too, which he didn't even know where to start with.

At least Loren doesn’t seem bothered, Sil remarked numbly. The merchant was uncharacteristically serious, yes, but not intimidated by a long shot. Maybe cartloads of money will do that for you.

After a moment of awkward silence, Loren cleared his throat and spoke.

“Well, Sil, I think we’d like you to start from when you ran out of the inn yesterday night. We can’t help you if we don’t know what happened. I mean,” he chuckled darkly. “Are we supposed to answer your questions with our own questions?”

Sil started, but squinted and shook his head.

“Help me? I don’t- why would I need help? Information, yeah, but I’m perfectly fine. Just sore… not even that hungry anymore.”

At this, the middle-aged man who’d bumped him in the head and made him feel better - somehow - grimaced.

“Your Herald is influencing you a little too strongly, Sil. Can I call you Sil? My name is Kemen, and this,” he nodded at the young woman next to him, who looked around the same age as him, “is Imelda.”

“What does that… mean?”

Kemen must have picked up on the note of sheer confusion in Sil’s voice, because he softened his tone and slowed down.

“Well… let’s start from the beginning. When a Favored is chosen by a Herald, they transcend beyond human, right?” Sil nodded. “That transformation is fueled by ether. I’m sure you feel it around you now, as well as inside you. Like a little current-”

“Yes,” Sil cut him off, and Kemen’s jaw tensed slightly. “I felt that the moment I woke up. It hurts sometimes, like right now.”

“That makes sense. Your body’s still getting used to it, especially with the amount I can sense you have. But,” a warning glare from the older man cut off another interruption from Sil. “But the main challenge for Favored is not the ether itself. You can train for that, and there’s usually low risk of actual injury from ether. No, the real risk is the influence of your Herald.”

Kemen took note of how Sil’s brow furrowed. He continued, “Every Herald leaves its own impression on the ether of their chosen. Kalatos is steady and patient. Those qualities have grown in me as I’ve trained, simply because of the contact I have with his ether. You… I recognize your Mark. Part of it. You were chosen-” for some reason, Sil’s frown grew deeper at that- “by the Crow. He’s dangerous, more so than many other Heralds. The Crow is cunning and proud and ambitious. It makes you strong, but you can quickly lose control. The Heralds of Medvos drift to violence more easily. They can relinquish moral codes and act without empathy. It’s not just you, of course, don’t worry - the Favored of the other Heralds, like the Hyena or the Shark, are known to be vicious, too. But the Crow chose you because it knew that you could get the job done. As difficult as your situation might be, know that.”

He leaned back and took a deep breath. “Now…” Kemen drawled, feeling the word in his mouth as he thought. Should I tell him… I’ll wait and see. “I’m glad we got that out of the way - you, and maybe this gentleman here, would be lost in the conversation without knowing that at least. We can offer you a lot, Sil. We can offer you a ticket out of this place and into an Institute, where you can hone your powers and defend your country, seek glory, adventure - whatever your goals may be. But I suspect that’s less important to you than the fact that we can help you hold on to yourself.”

When Sil responded, it was like water pouring out from a broken dam. His words stumbled over each other and his voice caught in his throat more than once out of desperation.

“Dad was awakening. He was the Crow's choice, not me. Something- something had gone wrong-” Sil pressed his lips together, jaw shaking, and looked over at Loren. “That was why Arlo burst in like that. That’s why Dad and his friends… the Herald was hurting him, somehow. I saw it above him. It looked angry, and I could see he was dying. The Crow was killing him, slowly. Black was creeping up from his fingers and it looked like he was in agony.

“I rushed in there. I couldn’t think of anything else to do. It hurt, that cloud; I thought I’d die too… but a green fire appeared. There wasn’t much at first, just sparks and flashes, but more and more came out of me until it didn’t hurt anymore. I still couldn’t save my father…”

Kemen glanced around the table. Imelda was fascinated, but he didn’t see the appropriate amount of shock in her eyes. The other man didn’t understand, either. No one, not even Sil, understood just how impossible this was. A botched awakening? Those happened, though rarely. But after that point, the chances became-

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“I tried to cover him with my body.” Tears had returned to Sil’s eyes. They dripped onto the table, but he kept going. “I thought if the flames could save me, they could save him, too. I guess I was-” He choked out a dark laugh that bled derision. “This thing I had in my pocket acted weird. You know, actually.” Sil looked over at Loren again. “The night cedar. I still have it here.”

Kemen was familiar with the night cedar. Its roots were attunable - if fed enough ether, they could grow incredibly resilient and gain properties of their own. Sil took out a box from his coat pocket and set it on the table with a loud thump. He opened the box, revealing the root Kemen had expected to see.

“It felt like it was draining some of the energy, uh, Imfir’s ether, but that was fine because there was so much of it. And then it took some of Medvos’. After that…” Sil shook his head, confused. “The black energy slipped past the root, just a trickle of it. It came in through the same hole that Imfir’s ether came out. And then… I could only watch as it filled me just as much as Imfir did. I felt Medvos on my wrist this time, the same spot - his Mark, on top of hers. I think I passed out, then. And woke up at Cassandra’s, damn hungry and thirsty, and- and it didn’t work. None of it worked. Instead,” Sil's frustration had been mounting, and his words came out like venom, now. “I woke up part of a new social class, reformed so I could leave all this terrible business behind. Oh, minus the fact that a Herald famous for corrupting people is stuck inside my body!”

Sil looked like he could have gone on, but Imelda cut him off. Her voice was kind in a way Kemen hadn’t heard from her this whole trip.

“Obviously, none of what happened is fair. You’d trade everything you gained for your dad back in a heartbeat, I’m sure, but no one gets to make that choice or everyone would. Your dad was a victim of a failed awakening. It’s not common, but sometimes, something can go wrong with the process. Someone can be attacked mid-awakening, which is both less common than you’d think and more common than it should be. They can do something that made the Herald change their mind even during the process, which is extremely difficult to do. Uh…” Imelda’s face scrunched up as she tried to think of another reason failed awakenings happened. Kemen cut in.

“The Favored-to-be can also reject the Herald. If that happens, if they refuse to take what they see as fruit from a poisonous tree, the ether starting to flow through them will turn against them. It will become a cancer in their veins. If that’s what happened, there was never any way to save your father.”

Sil blinked. If that’s what happened… it had to be what had happened. There was nobody there capable of attacking his father while he awakened, and nobody that would even if they could. It was a great boon, being friends with a Favored. And the anger in the Crow’s eyes… Sil hadn’t gotten the impression that it was the anger of a being exacting revenge, but an anger out of helplessness. The sort of helplessness that happened when his father, determined do-gooder that he was, rejected the arrogance and fury running through his veins. Goddammit.

There was never any way to save him. Sil took a deep, tentative breath and found it felt lighter with that knowledge in his chest. He was willing to half-believe it, for now. It could be a lie that the two strangers told to help him cope with his loss. The moment he got a chance, Sil intended on combing the shelves of a library to confirm.

After it became clear Sil was going to say nothing else, his head in his hands as he just breathed and sat with the information, Kemen spoke, incredulity dragging out his words.

“Your story rings true. There’s little other explanation for your Mark. You… you awakened to another Herald while in that cloud, and the night cedar root at your side… well, my working theory is that its funneling of the two types of ether allowed for a tiny spillover of Medvos’ ether into your body. Once that happened, neither you nor Medvos, I suspect, could do anything about the process. It would be worth replicating,” he remarked dryly, “if it were at all possible to replicating one Favored awakening in the throes of another Favored failing to. No. You, my boy, are incredibly, fearsomely, terrifyingly unique.”

Sil only felt a pang of guilt at the excitement that rose up in his chest to hear that. However extraordinary this achievement was, it had taken nothing but dumb luck on Sil’s part. And it was built on the back of my dying father.

“But there’s a flip side. You’re in a worse situation than I thought when it comes to being changed by your Herald. Even putting aside the fact that you’re young enough to be particularly susceptible to that sort of influence, or that Medvos’ influence is particularly strong, the fact that he never meant to choose you? It… it doesn’t bode well. It means that, for one reason or another, you were in the vast majority of people not compatible with his ether. It means you’ll have to fight and train and meditate like hell to keep the Crow out of your mind. And the influence of another Herald at the same time is unprecedented.

“It doesn’t feel like you have two separate reserves of ether, though I finally have an explanation for how you have so much of it. No, I’d imagine your ether has the influence of both in it, and can change depending on your intentions. Medvos’ touch amplifies your rage and cruelty, like it did ten minutes ago,” Sil winced and Emma looked to the side. There was a little more understanding in her expression, now, “but one can hope that Imfir can act as a counterbalance to buoy your lighter emotions. Well, that, or slowly tear your mind in two as two different dominant personalities emerge out of the polar opposites that your ether can encourage.”

Kemen looked around. Should I not have said that last part?

“Let’s not worry about hypotheticals. Sil, I think you and I can agree that you need to leave. Soon. You’re not going to find the kind of support you need here, and I can tell you that it is not easy to navigate in the Bardenas without protection. You could leave with me, but my timeline is probably far too slow for you and I don’t plan on leaving the desert for months yet.” Loren counseled Sil and received a grateful look from Kemen.

It was painfully clear to anyone that looked at him to see that, emotionally, the young man was running on fumes. That didn’t change Sil’s nodding.

“Yeah. You’re right. Before we leave, though, I need… to say goodbye. And to sleep. All of a sudden, I’m really, really tired.”

Imelda, at least, knew the feeling. She nodded and asked for a round of drinks.