The going had been slow since the storm hit. The caravan could only move as fast as its slowest wagon, so with one wagon damaged, the rest had been forced to a pace little better than walking. Hugo’s initial estimate of two weeks to Jellis quickly proved optimistic, and nine days in, they were perhaps halfway to the town that anchored the bottom of the Flax Road.
Worse was that the tedium of the previous days had vanished, consumed by a consistent, simmering anxiety. Oliver had reluctantly concluded, after a few days of research, that it was incredibly unlikely that the specter had been acting alone. The insubstantial breed of undead were drawn to concentrated life magic, which had likely caused its focus on Rose during their confrontation. According to the Umbral Lexicon, this behavior generally got specters killed quickly, if not by healers like Rose, then by magical beasts that had become enriched by life magic over a prolonged lifetime.
Most likely, Oliver decided, the specter was being controlled by a more powerful, or at least more intelligent, form of undead. With the viciousness of the storm that had hit them that night, it may have been pure happenstance that led the outsider to their caravan, but Oliver was convinced that another attack was likely, and had persuaded Hugo and the warden recruits that it was better to be prepared than surprised.
As such, the three young gifted had taken to spending shifts walking along the caravan, keeping an eye out for any possible threats, be they monsters, undead, or outlaws. This had the unfortunate side effect of Oliver spending a lot more time stuck in their little wagon with Beryl. He had gotten along well enough with the larger, outspoken girl when they were in Correntry, training together and sharing thoughts on the strengths and weaknesses of each other's techniques, but in the weeks they had been on the road, their relationship had steadily soured, for reasons Oliver wasn’t entirely sure of.
Most of the questions he directed at her earned little more than a grunt in reply, and his attempts to pull her into conversation had proven completely unsuccessful, with the muscular girl either ignoring him or shooting him down with some sneering comment.
Finally, the tension had grown too thick for Oliver. With Beryl out on her turn of what the trio had taken to calling “caretaking duty,” Oliver had carefully approached Rose until he was sitting on the floor of the wagon directly behind the driver’s bench. Despite her frail appearance, the animist had proven as skilled at driving their wagon as Beryl, a remnant of their childhood on the road, and she gamely directed the two large draft goats pulling their wagon.
“Hey Rose?”
“Oh, hey Oli,” Rose greeted him with a yawn, her customary cheer dampened by the same exhaustion he felt. “Done with reading already?”
Oliver sighed. “I think I’m almost done with the journal, but the Lexicon is… thick. Even for me.”
Rose snorted, the noise indelicate from her heart-shaped face.
“Can I ask you something?” he ventured cautiously.
Rose turned to face him, some sort of interest sparking on her face, more than he would’ve expected. “Sure? What’s up?”
“I just… Do you know what’s going on with Beryl lately? It’s like she doesn’t want anything to do with me. I don’t know what I did wrong.”
Rose sighed and looked almost put out for a second, before she turned back to the draft team. “It’s nothing you did,” Rose told him, her voice vaguely annoyed. Oliver couldn’t help wondering if she had been getting the cold-shoulder from the brawny brawler too.
“Then what is her problem lately?”
Rose stayed facing forward, and from his position behind her, Oliver couldn’t make out the expression on her face as she spoke. “You know we’ve been together for most of our lives, right?”
Oliver nodded, then realized that she would be just as unable to see him. “Yeah.”
“Well… at some point, Beryl got it in her head that she had… other feelings for me.”
“Other feelings?”
“Romantic feelings.”
Oliver blinked in surprise. “Wait… you don’t?”
“What?”
“I’ve just… I don’t know, I always assumed that you two were, like, together together.”
Rose turned in her seat again, arching an incredulous eyebrow at him. “Seriously?”
“I mean, yeah.”
“Why?” There was a surprising little beat of heat in her voice Oliver didn’t understand.
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“Well, you’re just always together. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you apart.”
“You mean like right now?” Rose mimed looking around, as if she expected Beryl to suddenly be sitting next to her.
Oliver flushed. “You know what I mean! When we were in the city, or training, or going out, you two were always just together. And you’re kind of… I don’t know, casual with her? Relaxed? I just…” Oliver trailed off, realizing that he really didn’t have any reason to think they were together. He had never even seen them kiss. He had just sort of, “...assumed.”
The justification must’ve seemed about as lame to Rose as it did to him, based on the pinched look she gave him. “We’ve been friends for our entire lives. That’s how people are around their friends, Oli.”
Oliver found himself at a loss on how to respond to that, and Rose’s face softened a little as she studied him. “Beryl is like a sister to me,” she explained in a more even voice. “But that’s all–no matter how much she wishes otherwise. I guess… I’m just more moon-bound than she is.”
“I suppose I could understand why that would put her in a negative mood,” Oliver admitted, “but I still don’t get why she needs to take it out on me!”
Rose turned back to him, her freckled cheeks flushing red with a look of intense irritation. “Oh Primal, you’re an idiot.” She threw down the reins of the draft goats, and snapped at him, “I’m taking my shift early.”
In a gust of wind, she was gone, launched off towards Beryl, and Oliver was left sitting in the wagon, flustered and confused. “Now what did I do?” Oliver paused, looking at the slack reins even as the draft team began slowing to a stop, no longer being urged forward.
“Rose!” Oliver called after her, panicked. “I don’t know how to drive the wagon!”
#
With both wardens-in-training as upset with him as they apparently were with each other, their wagon quickly became overfull of tension and sullen silences. Oliver found the opportunity whenever he could to take extra guard shifts, but the two girls seemed no more enthused to be alone with each other than they were to be with him.
So the following afternoon found Oliver walking rearguard for the caravan, while Rose led from the front of the wagon train and Beryl drove their wagon by herself. For lack of anything else to do–despite his best attempts, he had found reading while walking to be a dangerous endeavor–Oliver reviewed his gifts and the progress they had made since leaving Correntry.
Gift of the Vanguard
Level: Novice
Experience: 23%
Gift of Wind
Level: Novice
Experience: 28%
The fight with the specter, however brief it had been, had proven beneficial for Oliver’s slowly growing gifts. His gift of the vanguard gained experience from earnest, dangerous combat, as the specter had been the most genuine threat he had encountered since his first days with Adeline, when they had gone up against that tribe of kobolds.
Similarly, his gift of wind had grown from experiencing the savage storm, as Rose had promised. The blessing’s growth condition was significantly more vague than the gift of the vanguard’s, but the gift provided Oliver some innate understanding of how to strengthen it. Not only had facing down the powerful wind conditions of the storm provided experience by himself, Oliver had nearly died in the midst of it, buffeted by the winds while he fought the specter. The near death experience had provided a full nine percent boost to his experience.
Still, he was frustrated with his growth, or lack thereof. He knew that for an active sentinel, facing frequent danger in the Wastes, Novice level was generally considered to take a little less than a year, and as he approached three months since he had received his gifts, he was more or less on track. But he had hoped for more. Already, he could feel his own skills stagnating. He had eked out every advantage he could think of from the combination of his two gifts, and he fancied he was likely fighting close to the peak skill level for a Novice.
Still, he itched to improve, to make the next jump, to see what complications and new options his gift abilities would provide him with at Apprentice level. While he understood the importance of the mission Adeline had given him, he couldn’t help but be frustrated at how much it had stalled his growth, how much time he was wasting on the stupid dusty road when he could be training.
Of course, thinking of Adeline only made him even more wistful.
Oliver had never considered himself a lonely person, but looking back, he had never really felt much need to seek out companionship. He got on well enough with Alyssia and Olan, his older siblings, but their age differences and the paths their father had set for them had always kept a space between the three of them. There were other noble children close to his age, who he grew up taking lessons and socializing with, but those were formal relationships, predicated on codes of conduct and political advantage. As a third child of a low-ranking house, Oliver’s only real choice for friendship would’ve been to try to attach himself to a higher-ranking noble, someone like Allid, and while his father had often tried to push him to do just that, he had always resisted it.
Adeline had been different. Despite their differences in age, experience, power, and rank, Adeline had always treated him as more than an obligation. She had been interested in him and what he had to say, and had pushed him outside of the comfort zone he had built up over sixteen years of introversion. He had complained about being “forced” to go out for drinks or to explore Correntry, but she had never had to push him too hard.
There was more to her wistfulness than his crush on her. The simple truth, which Oliver could only see looking back after a month away from her, was that Adeline was his first friend. In many ways, his only friend.
Except for Rose and Beryl. Circumstances had thrown them together as Adeline and Farris became involved, but the two girls hadn’t treated him like the other fleeting acquaintances he had made in Correntry’s High Court. They had asked about his interests, joked around with him, treated him like a friend more than a social obligation. They had practiced together, learned from each other, and been sent on this mission with only each other to rely on.
And Oliver had spent the whole time angsting over things he couldn’t change. About his perceived views of his companions, and his inability to be what he thought they wanted…Still walking, Oliver’s eyes trailed down to his travel cloak, to the strategically placed loops and fasteners Adeline had shown him, but that he had never used.
Rose and Beryl had shared much of themselves with him. They told him about their greatest pains, the loss of their family, their time on their own, their coming of age and adoption by Farris. He had, in Beryl’s words, shared tit for tat, but there was still so much he hadn’t told them. So much he hadn’t told anyone, so much he had barely admitted to himself.
Perhaps it was time that he-
“ATTACK! TO THE FRONT!”