Against insurmountable odds, Rasp had held up his end of the bargain with Priestess Oreword. The nameless one, the faceless terror that’d preyed on the people of Kalikose for centuries, was dead. Priestess Oreword, overjoyed with the news, was quick to honor her end of the deal. She fitted each member of Rasp’s traveling party with food and supplies and promptly sent them on their merry way. The translator, Bromm, led the expedition, tasked with delivering the heroes as close to the Mossborn territory as the underground road system would allow.
Rasp had never encountered being treated as a hero before. And while he didn’t care for the hearty back slaps and cheering, he did like the part of being a hero where people gave him things, particularly food. It was almost enough to make him reconsider his hard stance against heroism — right up until he discovered the only way to return to Lonebrook as a celebrated hero was on foot. This, he decided, was unacceptable. What good was being a hero if you couldn’t ride around bragging about it? A hero didn’t walk! His elevated status demanded a symbol of station that would separate him from the commoner.
Alas, Rasp’s outrage was for naught. Priestess Oreword’s underground cult didn’t own any horses. Her cult members also loudly objected to being ridden like small, sturdy horses. Thus, without horses, mules, or even a dwarf to lug his lazy bones about, Rasp was forced to rely on his own two feet. Which meant walking. Lots of walking. And while on some level Rasp appreciated that walking was better than being slowly digested in the belly of a giant bug beast, this knowledge didn’t make his feet ache any less.
The escort party traveled for days along dark, twisting passages. The endless trek was broken up only by the occasional need to stop and sleep. Faris and Hop, having grown chummy through their shared death-experience, stayed near the front, carrying on a lively conversation. Whisper kept to themself near the middle while June and Rasp took up the rear, content to be as far from everyone else as possible.
It was for the better. The endless death march was making Rasp irritable and June, having lived a formerly solitary existence, insisted she’d had her fill of people for a lifetime.
“Come on, really?” Faris’s voice bounced along the dark tunnel in their direction. “You two are falling behind again.”
June’s arm was strung through Rasp’s own, assisting him almost as much as she was utilizing him as something to lean against. Her arm stiffened. “Dammit,” she muttered under her breath. “We’ve been spotted.”
“He’s not backtracking, is he?” Rasp whispered back.
“Headed this way.”
“Fuck,” Rasp hissed. “Hide me.”
Faris had been in an uncharacteristically positive mood since the monster’s defeat. It’d been endearing at first, when everyone else felt similar, but now, many days and miles later, Faris’s bottomless positivity was like sandpaper to Rasp’s fraying nerves.
“Need a break?” Faris’s voice was suddenly a lot closer than it had been moments before. Worse yet, Rasp had the nagging suspicion Faris’s question was directed at June, not him.
Rasp yanked his sister’s arm with a growl. “Don’t you fucking leave me.”
“Uh, yeah. You know what, a break sounds lovely. Thanks.” And, just like that, June abandoned his side, perfectly content to offer up Rasp as the sacrificial lamb to save her own skin.
Rasp flinched when Faris sidled up alongside him, linking arms.
“You’re lagging more than usual,” the faun remarked.
“Some of us are still recovering,” Rasp reminded him for the umpteenth time. And while he couldn’t keep using the same excuse over and over, it did hold some truth. The magical aftereffects of combining consciousness with millions of single-celled blobs of algae had drained him. He could feel his power returning, but it was unbearably slow, like trying to refill an entire ocean one measly droplet at a time.
Rasp could practically hear the smug smile dripping from Faris’s voice. “Still?” he said. “Must be hard not being the Kreigaar.”
Ah, yes. And there was that, as well. Who could forget? Certainly not Rasp, considering Faris took every opportunity to remind everyone involved that he — not Whisper, not Rasp, no one else who helped — was the fabled Kreigaar hero. It’d been funny the first few hundred times. Now it was just annoying. Just like Faris’s stupid, upbeat attitude and way he fawned over Hop like they’d been best friends for years. It was as if Faris had forgotten that they weren’t out of the proverbial woods yet. They still had to reach the surface, return home, and face whatever trials awaited them in Lonebrook. All while trying not to die!
Faris nudged Rasp from his thoughts with a bump of his shoulder. “Why are you so grumpy?”
“Why are you so happy?” Rasp deflected.
“Because I’m still alive and it feels like home’s closer than it’s ever been.”
Rasp supposed those were good reasons to celebrate, but still, he couldn’t bring himself to share Faris’s cheer.
“You’ve been in a dark mood since we left the city,” Faris carried on. “In fact, it seems to have started the exact moment you got back from your talk with the priestess.”
Ugly feelings stirred in the pit of Rasp’s gut. Anger bubbled and churned, clawing its way up his neck as the old flames of rage lit anew, pumping his veins with fresh poison. He forced the bile back down with a difficult swallow, refusing to allow it to spill across his tongue.
“What did you two talk about?” Faris wondered.
“Why are we having this conversation now?” Was it a piss poor attempt at deflection? Yes. Would it work? Absolutely not. But Rasp was determined to stall the inevitable for as long as possible.
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“Because you would have bit my head off when I first noticed. Figured I’d give you time to work through it, but you’ve only gotten worse. What’d she say to you?”
Rasp really, really, really didn’t want to talk about it. Except for the miniscule part of him that did, apparently, as the words came shooting out of his mouth like a greased hog on an oil slick. “The priestess is a healer, right? Put us all back together after our run in with the poison vines? Practically brought Whisper back from the dead, remember?”
“She’s powerful,” Faris agreed. “What’s your point?”
“Well I went back and begged her to do something, anything, about my vision. And she refused. Not because she couldn’t, but because she insists it’s all part of a stupid plan from the gods and she’s not allowed to interfere.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Ridiculous, right?,” Rasp said. “Now you know. And we don’t ever have to talk about it again.”
The faun mulled something over in his head for what felt like ages before doing the exact opposite of what Rasp said. “Are you mad about the lack of healing or the part about the gods?”
“Both.”
“Fair,” Faris conceded. “Talk more about the thing with the gods, though. I’m curious about that.”
In a mere matter of words, Faris had successfully singled out the root cause of Rasp’s worsening temper. And, instead of leaving the topic the fuck alone, the damn faun insisted on jabbing it with a stick over and over, as if he wanted Rasp to explode! “It’s all religious mumbo-jumbo, Dingle. There’s nothing to talk about.”
“Mhm.”
Fuck, why did his best friend have to be so good at this? Rasp threw his free hand into dingy air over his head. “The priestess thinks I’m avoiding my fate! That I’ve got some preordained destiny ahead of me and instead of embracing it, I’ve spent my life running away from it.”
“Did she say what you were running away from?”
“Of course not! That’s the whole priestess schtick, isn’t it? They keep things intentionally vague that way no one can ever call them out on their bullshit.” Rasp shook his head in an attempt to rid his mind of the icky feelings that clouded his thoughts. “I don’t believe any of it, but it’s still stirring up all kinds of old feelings. I’m the sixth son of a mighty Stoneclaw leader, remember? I thought I was past this death and darkness prophecy, but here it is, still haunting me wherever I go.”
Faris hesitated before speaking. For good reason too, because his words were like jagged chunks of salt being compacting into a gaping wound. “You did kind of already release death and darkness on the world. In the form of a dark entity.”
“Thank you for reminding me.”
“But my point is, you’re trying to fix it. Maybe that’s your destiny.”
“But I’m not running away from that.” Dear gods, was he running away from destiny by trying to fix his mistake? What was he supposed to do? Stand back and let the darkness win? Fuck that. The gods, or fate, or whoever supposedly controlled the strings could all go shove their heads up where the sun didn’t shine if that was what they had in store for him.
Faris tried a different approach. “What do you plan to do when you win? Let’s say Lonebrook’s saved, you finish your business with Whisper, and find a cure for the darkness. What then?”
“Nothing.” Blessed, lovely nothing. It was too good to be true, but that was the nature of dreams. This particular dream was the light at the end of the tunnel, propelling Rasp stubbornly forward.
Faris, naturally, had to go and ruin it. “Maybe you’re not supposed to do nothing. Maybe when you’re done righting your wrongs, you’re supposed to do more.”
“More?” What a horrible, dirty, rotten thought. Rasp lifted the corner of his lip in disgust. “Like what?”
“I don’t know. But you’ve got unimaginable power. Maybe you’re meant to use it for something bigger. To help people, maybe?”
“Ah-ha! See, that’s where you’re wrong. By the end of this, I won’t have power. I’m giving it all to Whisper’s egg.”
There was a thoughtful pause before Faris ventured. “You’re giving up your magic?”
“Yes.”
“All of it?”
“Yes, Dingle. Do I need to say two times more for you?”
Apparently not, as Faris had a reply ready. “And you don’t consider that running away from fate?”
He hadn’t. Not until now, anyway. “I consider it saving the world, actually. No good could have ever come from the likes of me having magic.”
“Except when you do good things with it, like saving innocent villages and stopping the spread of ancient dark entities.”
It was remarkable how much this conversation was not making him feel better. “I’m done talking about this. We can burn that bridge when we get to it, m’kay?”
Faris, fortunately, was prevented from laying out in no uncertain terms all of the reasons for which Rasp was wrong by the excited chatter up ahead. The pair fell silent as they listened for the cause of the sudden shift in attitude. The reason was almost enough to lift Rasp’s own low spirits — they’d reached the final gateway. After days and days of endless walking, the surface was tantalizingly near. They’d been traveling at an incline for so long, Rasp had started to think they’d never reach it.
“Don’t think this is getting you out of anything,” Faris murmured under his breath. “We’re revisiting this.”
That sounded like Future Rasp’s problem and was, therefore, remarkably easy to agree to considering Present Rasp didn’t intend to live long enough to deal with it. “Whatever you say.”
It was a lie and they both knew it, but home was suddenly a lot closer than it had ever been and Faris was too overcome with the urge to get topside to care. He locked his arm tighter and quickened his pace, dragging Rasp tripping and stumbling with him. The air grew fresher as they staggered up the final stretch. Rasp heard muttered grumbling and strained voices as the escort party fought with the door. He and Faris had caught up by the time dwarfs wedged the stone slab door open.
Blazing white light spilled inside. Rasp shielding his eyes with his free hand and tried to stop, but Faris kept going, drawn to the lit doorway like an insect to the alluring dance of a lantern’s flame. Blinded, with his limited vision swimming, head screaming, and feet protesting, Rasp graciously allowed Faris to haul his dead weight up and over the final step and out into the open air beyond. For the first time in weeks, his lungs filled with uncirculated air. It was clean, fresh, and bitterly cold.
Rasp blindly searched the ground with his foot, confirming what the clammy skin on his nose and ears were trying to tell him. “There’s snow already?”
Good gods, how long had they been underground?
The snowball that splattered against Rasp’s face confirmed his astute observation. “Fuck yeah!” June’s hazy form frolicked in the sunlight, whipping handfuls of snow at the rest of them, overcome with joy.
Rasp whipped the wetness from his face. “Now what?”
“Muck me, I know where we are. I recognize those mountains. Home is just beyond.” Faris sounded happy enough to join June in the snow. He didn’t, though. Not while they were still in the presence of the dwarfs. The almighty Kriegaar couldn’t be seen frolicking like an imbecile, after all. “I’ve got a plan and you’re going to love it.”
Rasp hung his head. “It involves more walking, doesn’t it?”
“Almost exclusively. All the way home.”