I pinch the bridge of my nose. I can already feel a headache coming on. “When did she pass?”

  “Just a few minutes ago,” Opal says, lowering her voice. “I felt it happen. I’m not sure if the other prisoners are even aware yet. I could feel her fading so I tried again to go help, but the other two tried to attack Nek when he opened the door.”

  I look at Nek skeptically. “Aren’t they bound?”

  “Yes,” Mirzayael interrupts. “However I have ordered my guards to leave at the slightest provocation. The prisoners are not worth risking the lives of our own.”

  “But they pose no actual threat?” I press. I can understand her stance, but if we had the capacity to save a life, and only did nothing because of Mirzayael’s orders… Honestly, I’m not sure what the solution is here. I just don’t like it.

  “No,” Mirzayael says cooly.

  I sigh. “I will go speak with them. Opal, do you still feel comfortable offering healing if they are willing?”

  There’s fear in her eyes, and her hands are clenched in a worried knot, but she nods anyway.

  “Thank you,” I say, and I truly am thankful for her help. We only have a handful of healers in the Fortress to begin with, and even fewer who were willing to offer their services to the enemy. Beryl’s retirement certainly hasn’t helped things, but she has more than earned it. Opal was one of her understudies, so this will have to do.

  Mirzayael just frowns at my suggestion, and I can feel her distaste like bitterness on the back of my tongue. When we first discovered the Jorrians, she had suggested we let them die—or toss the ones overboard who were healthy enough to recover. “It would only make our lives easier,” she had said.

  I can’t even disagree. The prisoners are a source of growing tension within the Fortress. No one wants them here, not even me. But I refused to commit war crimes when we flew over Jorria, and I’m not about to start now.

  I head over to the prison’s door, and Nek opens it for me. Inside, the room is dark, save for faintly glowing runes on the ceiling and walls which create an artificial twilight. Staying in the doorway, I touch a hand to the wall, pressing some of my mana into the spell circuit, and the room brightens.

  It’s a single room with no furnishings. The Jorrians are each secured to a different corner, where a few sheets of cloth serve as makeshift beds. They each have a bowl for water, a bowl for food, and a hole in the floor for waste.

  Ragna, the human Jorrian, growls at the increase in light and leaps to her feet. The binding around her wrist, fixed to the floor on a short chain, doesn’t even let her stand all the way straight. Her other arm is secured across her chest in a makeshift sling that she hasn’t allowed any of the healers to address. It will heal wrong if she waits much longer. Her broken arm and a large scab across her forehead are her only wounds.

  Gardi, the felis, is slumped against the wall. Unlike Nek, who has the pattern of a snow leopard, Gardi is tan and brown, similar to the coat of a mountain lion. They narrow their eyes at me, but remain still.

  I doubt they could even stand if they wanted to. They have bones broken in both legs, their tail, one arm, and their ribs. The healers have told me there’s internal injuries as well, though they can’t get more precise than that without a closer examination.

  “You,” Ragna spits, jerking against her manacle. “You’re their leader.”

  “Co-leader, actually.” I look at the last corner of the room, where the felis Ylva lays motionless. I step toward her.

  Ragna drops to the floor and kicks her legs out at my feet. Given it’s her wrist that is secured to the floor, this actually provides her with substantial reach. I side-step her attempt to sweep my legs out from under me, which moves me closer to Gardi. They exhale a quick breath, and white frost blows away from their mouth, swirling toward me.

  [Blaze activated.]

  Fire erupts around me, evaporating whatever ice-based attack the Jorrian had been trying to launch. Ragna and Gardi flinch away from the heat.

  [3 points of Burn damage dealt.]

  Whoops—that’s enough of that. I let the spell go out.

  “You alright?” Mirzayael mentally asks.

  I appreciate that she’s keeping the conversation private, so the Jorrians remain unaware of her concern. “I’m fine,” I assure her. “Just a bit of theatrics.”

  Aloud, I say, “I’m starting to understand why none of the healers have been able to help you.”

  Ragna scoffs. “As if you’d heal any of us. We know the offer is merely a trick.”

  I meet her gaze, disappointed. She returns the look, eyes burning with hatred. “It’s not a trick,” I tell her. “What would we have to gain from that?”

  “To play with us,” she says. “To torture us, before you kill us.”

  “If we wanted you dead, you already would be,” I say. “Though your stubbornness may have achieved that already.” I kneel by Ylva’s body.

  “Don’t touch her,” Gardi growls. It’s the first thing they’ve said, and even that much sounds like an effort. Their voice is weak and wet.

  I lay a hand on Ylva’s wrist. Her fur is so soft. Beneath it, however, I can find no pulse, and when I hold a hand to her mouth, I can feel no breath. The body isn’t even cold yet.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell them. “If our healer had been able to get to her sooner…”

  “What?” Ragna cries. “No. You’re lying. She was just awake! She was just breathing. She…”

  Gardi watches Ylva’s body for a moment longer, then they lean their head back against the wall with a weary sigh.

  “You will die next if we can’t treat your wounds,” I tell Gardi. “I suspect you already know this.”

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  Gardi says nothing. I turn to Ragna. “That arm will be permanently maimed if it isn’t set.”

  “Why do you care?” Her voice is shaking as she tears her gaze away from Ylva, but her eyes are dry. “You’re the enemy.”

  It strikes me at that moment how young they are. They’re both barely into their twenties, I think. Soldiers shouldn’t be that young.

  “Enemy or not, I don’t want anyone to suffer,” I tell her. “And I’d like to think that we don’t have to remain enemies. I’d like to think that we can find common ground.”

  Ragna’s expression hardens, and she spits at the ground. “There is no common ground to be found with those forsaken by the gods.”

  I shake my head. “To punish children for your hate of their parents hardly seems righteous to me. Even if the Fyrethian ancestors were forsaken by the gods, that doesn’t justify your treatment of our people today.”

  Ragna only glowers at me. “If you did not want us to treat you as Fyreneth, then why do you pretend to be her reborn?”

  I can’t help but laugh at that, which shakes surprised looks out of both Ragna and Gardi. I guess that hadn’t been the reaction they were expecting. “I don’t. I’m not Fyreneth, have no desire to be her, and you can ask anyone in this kingdom to confirm that I’ve done everything in my power to dissuade people of that notion.”

  For once, the Jorrians don’t seem to know what to say. Clearly they’d been told a different story.

  “I will be back to visit tomorrow,” I promise them, turning back to Ylva’s body. “I would again encourage you to consider accepting the healing we’re offering you. But if you hurt my healers, then I’m afraid there will have to be repercussions, so I should dissuade you from trying any more futile attempts to attack your guards.” I rest a hand on Ylva’s chest.

  “What are you doing?” Ragna demands.

  “She’s dead,” I say. “I need to remove her body before she begins to decay.”

  “No!” Ragna strains against her cuff. “Leave her! She needs a warrior’s ceremony. You heathens would not give her the honor she deserves!”

  I clench my jaw and blow a measured breath out my nose. “You’re making it very difficult to foster empathy for you, do you realize?”

  “Please,” Gardi breathes. “We will take care of her.”

  “You’re in no condition to do anything,” I tell them. “You want to give her a proper ceremony? Fine. Get better first. I will store the body for now.”

  I nudge the Dungeon Core, directing its attention to Ylva. Don’t dismantle it, I warn the Core. We’re just putting it in your Inventory.

  Swallowing things whole isn’t nearly as tasty as chewing them, but the Dungeon Core agrees, happy to have anything to consume.

  Ylva’s body vanishes, and Ragna gasps. Gardi might have, too, if they weren’t struggling to simply breathe.

  And then something strange happens. I notice a shift on the Dungeon Core’s Map interface. Usually, I keep the Interface bare, just providing me a three-dimensional display of the Fortress and all the stone beneath. I mainly use this to visualize the layout of the castle and keep tabs on the spell networks and the flight dynamics and control structures. However, that’s really just a simplified version of what I could display.

  As long as the Dungeon Core has consumed a substance, and it falls within the Dungeon Core’s range, it can appear on its Map interface. This includes all sorts of things besides just rocks: bowls, pots, tools, even textiles (after the Core ate a blanket, once). Populating my mental map with all these things is extreme overkill, however, and it only serves to clutter the interface, so I keep most of these things from displaying. But I discovered another thing that could be displayed on the Map: living things.

  Although the Core isn’t capable of adding living things to its Inventory, it is fully capable of consuming the remains of dead plants and animals. I had noticed, once, after the Core ate some dead mushrooms and moss, that the living equivalents had appeared as options to display on the Map.

  And now the option “Felis” has appeared.

  In fact, as I’m looking through the list of displayable artifacts, I find that Human is also already on the list.

  “Okay.”

  The word pulls me out of my most recent and disturbing revelation.

  Gardi closes their eyes, resting against the wall. “The healer. Please.”

  “What?” Ragna hisses. “Gardi, no! They can’t be trusted.”

  They don’t respond. I leave to go get Opal; she’s still willing to help, so she and Nek head back into the cell while Mirzayael and I wait outside. She regards me for a long moment.

  “Out with it, already,” I say with a sigh.

  “They could just be accepting help to better fight us,” Mirzayael says.

  “They could be,” I agree. “But I don’t think they are.”

  “They’re not going to become a friend just because we stopped them from dying,” she continues.

  I rub my forehead. “I know.”

  “And we can’t hold a ceremony for Jorrian dead,” she says firmly. “Do you know how that would look?”

  I grimace. She’s right, of course. I didn’t mean to lie to them. It had just seemed like the right thing to do. I would have wanted the opportunity to bury my friends, in their shoes. “I’ll figure something out.”

  Mirzayael’s scowl breaks into weariness. “Kindness won’t win every battle for you. It didn’t with Jorria. And while we may never have to deal with them again, we’re likely to run into other people who will be equally hostile. What will you do when that day comes? Are you prepared to fight again?”

  “I am,” I assure her. “I’ll do everything in my power to stop that from happening. But if we do find ourselves facing another foe, and if there’s truly no common ground that can be reached, this city comes first. It always will.”

  Mirzayael breathes out a faint laugh. “Even in your hypothetical you’re looking for common ground.”

  “It will be a difficult world to navigate without,” I say.

  Nek and Opal step back outside the cell, and Nek secures the door.

  “Well?” I ask as they join us.

  “I repaired the internal damage in the felis,” Opal says. “I don’t have enough mana to heal all their wounds. I partially healed the bones in their arm and chest. I’ll need to return for at least three more days to address everything else.”

  “Thank you,” I say. “And Ragna?”

  “She refused,” Nek grumbles. “Again.”

  I hadn’t really expected anything less. But Gardi accepting healing is progress, at least. “I’d like to return again during your next healing session,” I tell Opal.

  “Please do,” she says, looking quite relieved. “I’d feel better with you there.”

  Opal leaves and Nek returns to guard duty as Mirzayael and I head back up toward the palace.

  “About protecting the Fortress.” I mentally dip back into the Dungeon Core interface while we walk. “I’ve just discovered something of interest.”

  While I explain the Map options to her, and what happened when the Dungeon Core took the dead felis into its Inventory, I mentally activate the Human and Felis options on the Map. The Fortress immediately lights up with hundreds of tiny dots. While the dots don’t provide any information other than “Felis” when examined, it still strikes me as a powerful tool. I can track the location and movement of every felis—and the one human—within the Core’s range.

  Mirzayael listens intently while I lay all this out. “That is unsettling,” she remarks, echoing my own thoughts. “But useful. I would feel better about engaging with outsiders if I knew their movements could be tracked, and if I knew we could keep track of our own.”

  “Only if they’re felis or human,” I say. “Any other species would be invisible to the Map Interface.”

  Mirzayael regards me thoughtfully.

  “I don’t like that look,” I say.

  Mirzayael smiles. “I wish to try an experiment.”

  She could knock me over with a feather. “You what?”

  “Come.” She turns down a side passage, taking us away from the throne room and toward the wing that had become devoted to personal chambers. Mentally, I feel her probing the Dungeon Core. “I have something I’d like for you to eat.”

  The Dungeon Core hums happily in our minds. Oh, good! It really loves eating. Eating is its favorite thing!

  Has it mentioned that?

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