“So, inactive as it is, we might treat it as a deep well of Souls?” I asked, studying the old ivory shards of the portal. It appeared as if it’d been broken by pick, how the once-great disk was fragmented into chunks no larger than my head.

  Emalia nodded, glancing over to the hall nervously. “I assumed Raizak—or, the Souls, rather—needed it to merge a connection with the material world. Like a fuel source.”

  “Was my heart not enough?”

  She did not meet my eyes. “I don’t know. It was always a creature’s heart, a sacrifice of a monster. I thought it had something to do with using an object forged of Sorcery as a focus for whatever ritual was planned. It was not my place to question.”

  “Hm.”

  “Daecinus, I—”

  I stopped her with a raised hand and said, “You were deceived by Spirits far older and more insidious than yourself. It is impressive you managed to retain much control and awareness for as long as you did. In fact, there was likely no worse host for them, in that sense.”

  “I… Thank you.” Her expression, broken by regret, brown eyes burnished with unshed tears and wavering in their effort to meet mine, faltered between grief and determination. She wore the look of immense loss—that of her own free will, her own conscience—and bore it as I had when I awoke in Rotaalan. “I wish,” she said, “to do right by you. To make use of what these voices have led us to.”

  My heart sank, for I did not wish to deceive her nor to betray her, and so I was faced with the hideous, unavoidable conundrum of repeating past mistakes. Of following in the ancestral footsteps faded from the sands of time once left by my own feet. “I cannot let it rest, Emalia.” I closed my eyes and decided that, at the very least, I had to save those who’d fought to save me, to bring us here. My friends of sorts. “If you wish to do right by me… then keep out of my way.”

  Using the broken portal as an immediate source of fuel, I wrought an immense volume of Soul magic through my body, capable only with the circlets and diadem, and released it in an expanding web of dominion. The effort would have killed me if I were as Corrupted as I was before, for the latent Soul decay might have grown beyond control, feeding off the excess magic in my blood. It pained me, it tore at me, it even began the Corruption that I’d labored so ingeniously to do away with, but it was a minor inconvenience, a minute setback. For within a moment, the hundreds of Dead swarming the tower, infesting the courtyard, assaulting the warriors who’d brought us here—they were all mine.

  Immediately, I had them halt, then sent orders for Protis to stop the fight and prevent any more destruction of my future vessels. With the same rush of power, I pushed through and took complete control of my other Soulborne, leaving one to defend the mercenaries from any unforeseen threats as Protis and the rest searched the top level. I needed Artifacts. I needed advantages. As is, I was still a fraction of my former capacity. I doubted Soulfire would even form properly, for the innate feebleness of some more complex Spells was near-insurmountable.

  “Daecinus, I know you want justice for your people, but whatever you have in mind cannot be the solution,” Emalia said, snapping me from my reflections, already grasping the beginnings of my intent. “For you, it was months ago, but most don’t even know of Pethya. The ones who will suffer do not even know their ancestors’ names who lived during those times!”

  “Then who is responsible?” I demanded, barking suddenly, viciously. It was all ending now. The fa?ade of peace. The calm before the storm I was always going to bring. The inevitable. “Who pays for the crime that’s gone unanswered? Who? Me? I did my share of terror, and I suffered imprisonment for centuries. Abuse and exploitation unparalleled in history.” I stepped forward, towering over this priestess of a people whose glory and strength were built on the destruction of mine. The Souls of the broken portal shrieked into my mind, adding to the screeching protests of the Dead futilely struggling against my will. A cacophony of mindless hunger and violence, chewing, eating away. But they would find no freedom from my iron grip.

  “We gave Vasia fair treatment when it was still in its youth, floundering and turbulent,” I said, glaring down at her, memories sharp and vicious, resistant to their resurrection. “We avoided a war with all efforts possible as they barked and howled. We sent dignitaries and envoys in peace with gifts and promises of treaties. And what did they do? The curs impaled them! Our messengers of peace upon stakes along our border. Our Sorcerer guards imprisoned and tortured. My love, my life partner, murdered by savages and left to the gulls!” I was shouting, nearly screaming, the dam broken, voice cracking, and tears trickling from my narrowed eyes; the fire and rage and torment finally loosed from years of buried focus at the expense of all else to bring her back. That sacred quest, stolen away by Vasian arrogance. “I could have burned your cities to ash and made thralls of all I came across; I could have marched my Dead through your streets and did to them what they did to my love. I could have done worse… But I was lenient. I let your people live. I gave them a second chance because it was what she would want. Because I hoped they might live up to her dreams of a peaceful, prosperous future. And what did they repay my kindness with? Her’s? Betrayal! My peace. My moderation. Burned with Soulfire when they killed my sister and imprisoned me before the destruction of my home! And you ask for reconciliation? You ask for forgiveness?” Despite the whisper of humanity, the repressed notions of forgiveness and peace, I felt my face twist into a snarl of hatred, as sinister as any monster’s. My people are dead. The Vasians killed them all. And only I am left with the charge of justice. “If I were not bound by my conscience, I would march south and end your civilization! All reduced to whispered stories of fear and terror that’d create a mythos of despair for generations to come!”

  I took a deep breath, straightening. I looked from her to the mercenaries in the hall, watching me with wide eyes and open mouths. “But I am not the monster your ancestors thought I was. I will not destroy Vasia and all within her borders. I will not give my people the thorough vengeance they deserve. I will merely cut off the head, and whatever dies with it shall. This will be my justice, my moderation.”

  In that moment, I could not read all the faces turned my way. Horror, perhaps, but it was not directed at me as much as it was the reveal of the truth—this, at least, was the hope of my distant, agreeable mind. Rather, I focused on the few I was most familiar with. Oskar watched me with a tight mouth and narrowed eyes, attentive and analytical, perhaps; understanding and predicting, certainly. I did not know what to make of him. Of what he might do. Stanilo was the picture of concern, his brawny features bent in care—he would want to talk, to understand before any judgment or dissuading. It was what I admired about him so. Feia stood shakily, mouth open, arms rigid at her side, eyes bearing tears. This, perhaps, is what alarmed me most of all. Not once had I seen her cry. I went to take a step forward, perhaps to see to her, but I held myself still. She had experienced loss of her own kind. My story, brutal and extreme as it was, had to resonate with her. She’d lost a partner of her own—this, I was already confident about—but here, seeing her reaction, I knew it to be true. Perhaps she’d even had a family. Children. She understood as no one else could.

  “So what will you do?” Sovina asked, inside the chamber near Emalia. Haggard and soaked in the black, stinking blood of the Dead, she was not afraid as others were, nor in shock.

  My response was quick and decisive, steeped in the certainty of long contemplation and foregone conclusions.“I will march on Nova and break your Column. I will demand the heads of the tsar and all the voivodes and priests who reside there. Then I will leave your people in peace.”

  “That won’t work,” Oskar said, laying his ichor-stained blade over his shoulder as he stepped inside the chamber with a grimace. “They won’t surrender. Not to you. Not to anyone. That's not how things work.”

  “That is their choice.”

  “Will you fight the whole tsardom then?”

  “I will do what I must.”

  “Not some monster, eh? Yet you’re willing to kill whoever gets in your way.” He snorted derisively, looking me up and down. “We should have left you in the ruin to rot.”

  “Perhaps.” I bowed my head, for he was not wrong in his analysis. “For the good of your people, perhaps you should have.”

  “You’re just like them.”

  “If I was like them, you and yours would be captured and used as Soul vessels for stronger Dead in a total war against Vasia. If I was like them, I would seek complete destruction.”

  “Don’t concede to this so quickly, Daecinus,” Emalia pleaded.

  “Concede?”

  “To this violence, no matter how justified. I was raised in the Column, an expert in its workings and influence as few others are—maybe there is another way. Maybe somewhere, out there, your people's descendants still live!”

  “Is this hope something I should follow in blind faith? Something I should stay all action for in the slightest possibility of Vasia’s genocidal failure?” And my own Dead army’s lack of thoroughness in slaying my people? The thought shamed me, but it was no less true. If the Spirits spoke accurately… No, why should they? It was optimal to lie, to sway me from any goal but their own resuscitation, which required my sacrifice. It was them who were to blame. “No. I shall not hesitate a moment longer. Vasia shall face my reckoning.”

  “How many times has his Soulborne saved you and yours?” Feia interrupted, standing at the doorway, gesturing to everyone else. “Has he not earned respect? Fair treatment? Daecinus Aspartes requires justice. His people require justice. How many must be slaughtered by the harsh hand of Vasia before they receive equal treatment? How many villages torched and states extinguished? In your hearts, you know his words are true. In your Souls. He requires justice! Will all only oppose?”

  “We know, Feia. Few of us here lack a good reason to put a torch to the imperial flag, but there’s more to it than that. There’s death. A lot of it.” Oskar dropped his shield, grabbed her arm, and pulled her away from the threshold, glaring at me as if I were evil. “No matter how many bodies you throw at the empire, it doesn’t die, and it doesn’t change. Fighting it’s a fool’s errand.”

  “Then put your mind to it, Oskar,” she replied, jerking away from his grasp. “You were once a druzhina of a voivode, no? Is this the extent of your scheming? Are you so easily stymied?”

  “Do not speak of that!”

  “Are you so afraid of a past lost? Mine was slaughtered, hung, and defiled, yet I do not shake at the thought of confrontation! I yearn for it again!” She stabbed his chest with a finger, and I felt my muscles tense in preparation. “You were a druzhina, now in disgrace. But this is merely a title—”

  He grabbed at her tunic, catching a handful of bones and beads strung along a necklace. They clattered to the floor as he pulled her close, snapping the thread. “It was everything. Don’t you condescend to me, not after I saved you.”

  “Oh? Imperious and domineering? How the Vasian in you lights ablaze when pushed.”

  His reaction was quick and sudden as he shoved Feia against the wall. He went to strike, raising an arm, but stopped himself. As did I, with a hand raised to a poised Protis. Emalia shouted for peace, her voice echoing in the silence of violence-wrought tension.

  Oskar blinked, squeezed his hands into fists, and took a step back.

  Feia ran a hand over her scalp and jutted a bloody finger pointed toward me, staring out at the mercenaries. “Before you stands the messiah of your vengeance. Will you not take it? Will you not stand up for the bones in the fields of lost battles, sacrificed by the ones you called voivodes?”

  “I’ll not be a part of this.” Oskar took another step back, bumping into the wall, eyes darting around like a cornered animal’s. “Never.”

  “Then run home to Vasia and kiss your masters’ feet, dog.”

  That blade of his rose. It pointed straight at my chest, shaking slightly.

  “Is this wise?” I asked, stepping forward past a still-pleading Emalia, her voice of reason a faint, distant thing. “Your men are surrounded, pinned by my Dead. Even if you killed me, you would all be torn apart. Will you sacrifice your men for your pride?”

  Stolen novel; please report.

  He blinked, looking to Sovina. “We’re leaving. This… this isn’t right. We need to go.”

  “Please, Daecinus,” Emalia begged. “The Column is my home! The sheer knowledge there! The potential for more!” Sovina grabbed her arm and began pulling her away. She fought to get loose, but Sovina was determined to see her out safely. For this, I was glad. “You can’t do this!”

  “Leave in peace,” I said. “Nothing I control shall harm you. But do not go to Vasia. This, I beg of you. There will be little I can do to safeguard you if you are caught in the violence.”

  “You needn’t forgive them, but you can’t wage this war! We can work together! We can find the truth of what happened!”

  “The truth.” I shook my head, staring off into the city. “Perhaps when I take your Column, I will find records there that redeem some small sliver of your people’s legacy of death. But there is no truth beyond this: they killed my people, and for that, they will suffer.”

  Emalia was a woman of resolve and purpose, and so she did not stop trying to convince me as she was pulled away. Even as they entered the hall lined with still, intentionless Shells, she shouted after me to reconsider, to give them a chance as I did to her. How if I could free her of the Spirits, perhaps more can be done for the misdeeds of Vasia’s past. That, in the end, ancient sins should not be forgotten and buried but resolved through effort and goodwill. The arguments, varied and thorough as they were, rang hollow to my ears. I would hear nothing of peace. Not now. Perhaps not ever. And so her calls of reconsideration were met with silence as Sovina dragged her from this Ruin.

  Oskar, retreating, gestured to Feia. “Don’t stay here. You’re one of us.”

  “That is what I thought.” She raised her chin up high. “But I have a purpose here.”

  He winced. “I’m sorry, Feia. I’m—”

  “Oskar, I am grateful for all you’ve given me. Safety, belonging, courage in the heart of scared woman facing death…” she trailed off, then shook her head, looking at him evenly and without any dramatics or derision. “You helped give me life again. But it is not something I will squander and let rot away. This purpose is in my blood as alive as the Sorcery I wield.”

  A long moment. He seemed to want to step forward, to reach out, to sway her, maybe even to force her to leave with him, but he pulled back and looked away. “Alright. Fine. Just don’t get yourself killed following some quest for justice. It never goes as you want it.” He shook his head and wiped off his sword, sheathing it. “We came for riches of silver and gold. No matter how sick this makes me, I’m not leaving till my men get what they deserve.”

  “Understandable,” I answered, waving a hand past him, mental commands and responses already received and sent like an active pigeon post, all enabled by the circlet and arm rings. “You shall find such treasure at the stairwell. You will be satisfied.”

  “Fine.” He turned away and left. He’d find old gold at the end of the hall in a chest big enough it’d take two men to carry it. Few others spared a moment to say goodbye. I did not know if it was Oskar’s concerns that silenced their words or an eagerness to leave. Either way, it hurt to be left so easily, and I imagined Feia felt it more harshly.

  There were a few, however, who lingered a moment longer. Waker was struggling to hold back tears in his apologies, Nifont hung in the shadows, and Stanilo stood at the entrance with a long look my way. “Sure this is the way of things? It’s never too late.”

  “I am not changing my mind, Stanilo,” I said.

  “I know.” He smiled softly. “Just had to try. Can’t let things be with half-effort, is all.”

  That old glint of prideful knowingness lit up Feia’s face. “We will see each other again.”

  “Then I can rest easy.” He turned fully to face her. “I hope you find what you’re looking for, Feia. Hope it comes together. I really do. Deus knows the search is a difficult one.”

  “To search is to deny the weavings of fate, Ekhenist.”

  “To search is to fulfill His will.”

  She scowled at him for a breath, then nodded. “I shall scan for your god’s purpose.”

  “Gods, I’m so sorry,” Waker muttered, rubbing his face. “I wish it didn’t have to end like this. Everything was going well and—”

  “Move on,” she replied evenly. “It’s done. Oskar’s mind is made up for the rest of you.”

  “I just… I wish…” His head bowed. “Be safe. Please.”

  Nifont cocked his head towards the leaving others, making to depart himself. “Listen, Oskar might act like he doesn’t give a shit, but he does. Others too.”

  Feia’s face went blank. “Even if they are too cowardly to wish well partings themselves?”

  “Yeah.” He shrugged and turned to leave, then paused. “If it were up to me, we’d be joining you, Daecinus. Vasia deserves it all and more.” Then he left, shoving Waker along with him.

  Stanilo remained, giving us one last nod, then said, “Do what you must, but don’t forget about all the little people. A whole lot more than the ones wearing gold.”

  His words were a balm to the angry wound in my heart, though it was not nearly sufficient. And yet, he was soon gone, and despite what Feia said, I knew that I would not see his face again, or, if I did, it would be in vastly different circumstances.

  The fading padder of footfalls. The eventual silence of a stone tower, old and forgotten, still as a graveyard. I felt their absence immediately. It was the first time since awakening I was far from the others. And, if not for Feia, alone.

  “You do not have to join me,” I said, exiting the portal room, watching her. “You mustn’t feel any holding obligation because of me, Feia.”

  She cast me a sharp look. “Is that why you believe I am here and not scurrying off with the others?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Fine.” She frowned out after them. “It hurts to separate after so long together, indeed. But I had to do it.”

  “Even if it puts you at risk?”

  “To live is to die. To follow fate is to die only in body.”

  To her words, I said nothing else. Death was death. There was nothing else to it. We liked to imagine a meaningful afterlife in all its permutations, but in truth, it was silence. The most grave loss. And fate? I had much to say about the concept of predestination. In reality, life was messy, chaotic, and unpredictable without any end goal or direction, and to believe otherwise was to assign humanity to random chance. No, my only beliefs were that of human will. To live was to carve your own way. To die was to disappear in all but memory.

  As such, I would make my way, starting with the tools here.

  Before the drums of war could begin, before my flames of retribution, I would need to prepare. I would need knowledge, tools, and, finally, an army.

  I turned from the disappearing forms of the others I’d called friends and looked out the broken chamber toward the city cast in an evening glow. Here, my preparation would start. Here, the beginning of the end.

  …

  Emalia stopped struggling when they entered the tunnel leading back toward the keep’s curtain wall. In truth, she knew there would be no convincing the others to turn around nor any possibility of convincing Daecinus to change his mind. He was as set upon his course of action as she was upon leaving the Column. But how could she have known? How could she have expected such deception from those Spirits?

  And now, being pulled from what seemed like her found purpose, from what had been her life’s purpose… She felt empty. Lost within herself. So she walked beside Sovina in silence, far ahead of the others. And now, she couldn’t even help Daecinus.

  There’s still a chance, she told herself. I will run across him again before it is too late, and I can sway him. Maybe it was hopeless and foolish to think such things, but she did anyway, even as lethargy and a sort of heavy emptiness swamped her heart. Even if most of her felt like giving up, a small part of her fought for hope. Maybe it was her nature. Maybe she was just clinging to something for it all to make sense in a world that simply didn’t.

  They reached the end of the tunnel and surfaced within the wall, climbing to the top to stand on the battlements and gaze over the city. It was still so quiet. The courtyard was as well, but in a far more eery sense. All the Dead were just frozen there, facing the tower’s broken open doors, staring like statues. It made her shiver.

  Sovina looked back the way they came and gestured further down the wall, so Emalia followed her to stand a few dozen paces from where the others would emerge. They stood facing each other in the shadows of a tower.

  “You were brave in there,” Sovina said.

  Emalia scrunched her face up, squinting at her companion, who’d just dragged her away. “What do you mean? I failed. I failed myself, you, everyone else—”

  “We were tricked. And I almost… You were almost lost to that thing. And still, you fought for what was right. I don’t think I’d have the courage.”

  “Don’t say that.” Her voice wavered, cracked. She swallowed and rubbed at her eyes, suddenly wet with held tears. “You don’t have to lie to me.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Well, I don’t feel brave. I feel foolish. Stupid.”

  “Em,” Sovina said, holding her shoulders and staring at her with such intense fervency that it was almost alarming. “I knew this journey would be hard. I knew we might not find what we were expecting. From the moment you told me of your vision in the Column, I had my worries about the future. But for all the world frightened me, I felt sure of one thing: you. And now, after all we’ve been through, I feel the same way as I did then. You had your very beliefs shaken with this Sorcerous lie, yet you still tried to help Daecinus, to help those in the Column who might not deserve it. That’s brave. That’s strong.”

  Her heart squeezed and stomach churned, some sort of sorrow threatening to take over. She wrapped her arms around Sovina in a tight embrace, burrowing her face in her companion’s neck, trying not to cry. Failing. Body shaking with the tears. Her head swimming, chest hurting.

  “It’s okay,” Sovina murmered, holding her tight.

  Emalia sniffed, wiped her face on her own arm, and looked up. She took in Sovina’s face, every detail, every impression. Her sharp and determined jawline; dark, messy hair, falling around her face in rebellious waves free from the confines of her helmet now held at her side; and eyes like hot coals, like a warm night. “You’re so beautiful.” It escaped her lips almost on accident, but she did not take it back. She thought of their kiss earlier, and her body tingled, head filling with static.

  Sovina’s eyes widened slightly, though she did not pull away.

  And so, before her emotions could calm and reason got the better of her, Emalia craned her head up and leaned in, closing her eyes shut as she pressed her lips to Sovina’s. Everything stopped. Even her heart, pounding away like a drum, seemed to go silent. Just the warm, flooding sensation of the kiss. Something snapped her out of it, and she pulled back and stared at her companion, feeling nervous but unable to avert her gaze.

  “I’m sorry,” Emalia whispered. “Again.”

  Sovina’s lips parted as she took a deep, unsteady breath. Then she shook her head with a grin and squeezed Emalia tighter. “I already told you: don’t be.”

  Her face hurt from the smile that erupted there, but before she could lean in for another kiss, the sounds of footsteps made her pull back and glance to her feet. Was it shame? Embarrassment? She couldn’t say. And yet, Sovina’s hand found hers, strong and safe. Skin tingling, she gripped it tightly.

  …

  Oskar stomped his way through the crunchy forest floor like a plow team turning up soil. Branches, twigs, bushes, and ferns all went underfoot without half a mind to the noise as he scowled on ahead. Give a woman some bread, feed her for a fortnight. Teach her to tend the fields and grow her own grain, and she tells you to fuck off and goes to fight the bloody world. He wanted some shambling corpse to stumble upon him so he could tear its damn guts out, he was so bent up with frustration. Not that there’d be any Dead around with what Daecinus was doing. Stealing ‘em all for his bloody army. By all the selfish, manipulative gods, why did it always come to men’s greed and vengeance? Why was it always some personal quest? Was Oskar the mad one? Was he?

  The rest of the band was more-or-less in a good mood, voices returning with grins and muted laughter, likely at all the riches they left with. He should’ve been smiling himself. Money meant finally retiring, putting the sword aside, and all that. It was what he swore he wanted for the last few years now, after all.

  So why was he still feeling like a gutted fucking horse?

  “She’ll be alright,” Stanilo said.

  Oskar squinted over at the man, who had somehow snuck up beside him. “What could possibly make you think that?”

  “I just feel it.”

  “You feel it? Well, I feel like she’ll get herself tortured and executed for opposing the tsardom with Sorcery.” He hawked up a wad of spit and shot it to the side. “I knew he was fucking mad. ‘Don’t judge the man by how he looks,’ is what I thought. Yeah, well, that’s what I get for not following my gut when I saw a man grey as stone emerge from a damn coffin and suck the language from Sadoch’s walking corpse. Now he’s gonna wage war on Vasia.”

  “Fuck ‘em,” said Nifont, also at hand. “We got no love for the empire. They’ll get what’s coming.”

  “A lot of Dead in there, but this is Vasia we’re talking about. Daecinus will get a few steps across the border and find the Western Army on him. A horde of Shamblers won’t do much then.”

  “What if he makes more Soulborne?”

  “Well…”

  “And knowing him, he won’t make his attack obvious. He’ll try to sneak across.”

  A hundred of those creepy creatures in Nova? Shit. “Yeah, maybe. Easier said than done if he’s got an army to move. Can’t sneak an army anywhere, can you? Especially Nova.”

  Stanilo shook his head. “I don’t think Daecinus will go that far—attacking a city.”

  Oskar scoffed. “When they refuse his demands, he’ll wage full-on war.”

  “He’s a good man. An angry, lost one, but still good.”

  “I’ve seen a look in his eye, Stanilo. He’ll do whatever to win.”

  The tall man sighed, shield slung over his back, spear held across the back of his neck, elbows dangling down, arms thick as legs. “Maybe alone. But if there was one blessing of Feia leaving us, it’s that she can sway him. Alone, a man with a mind like his might spiral down, but with her? Even as determined as she is? I think you’re underestimating him, Oskar. Both of them.”

  “Underestimating? The poor bastard had his civilization fucking destroyed. His envoy life partner or whoever put up on a stake. His sister killed in front of him, and himself locked away in a floating city to use as fuel or some sick shit. By the High and Low, if it were me, I’d be raging mad trying to kill every last person who’d even heard of Nova.” He shook his head, then continued, “What he wants to do is evil to me, sure enough. But if I were in his place, I’d be aiming for much worse. Feia being helpful to his sanity or not, they’re bent on violence. And it’ll get them killed.”

  He wanted to think they’d change their mind and pursue a more peaceful plan, but maybe Oskar was just too jaded for that. A man like Daecinus, a woman like Feia… Well, they’d only ever stop at self-annihilation, maybe leaving a lot of bodies in their wake.

  “I lost everything in the war,” Nifont said suddenly, breaking their silence. “I hate every last voivode, boyar, priest, and druzhina in Vasia. This is fate or something. Justice as much as one can ever see it. Maybe bloody justice, but a righting of wrongs enough.”

  Oskar grunted noncommittally and glanced at Stanilo. “Your thoughts?”

  “I don’t know. But maybe the whole thing can be avoided if Vasia knows.”

  “Let them know? By all the gods, you really think they deserve that?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. But there’s more than boyars and voivodes in Vasia, Oskar.”

  How did I get here? From wanting to overthrow the proper voivode for a better one, bringing about civil war, to considering saving the old guard that’d done nothing but betray us? “Damn it. I’m not about to tell Vasia, and no chance I’m getting in Daecinus’s way. I’ve half a mind to leave them to sort it out,” he said, knowing he was stalling. “Let’s head south, spend some coin, and talk it over later. In the end, if it comes to the two of them versus Vasia, well… I don’t know. Not exactly an easy answer here.” He sighed and wished for a better solution, preferably one that didn’t require much risk on his part. “First, let’s bring Emalia back to civilization and finish this shit show of a job.”

  They didn’t argue with him, so he nodded to himself and continued, feeling like he was treading water and just beginning to fail. And something was lurking underneath.