I slipped out of the broken doorway to the keep. There was no actual door to bar it thanks to Vera’s unrelenting flames a few bells prior – just some rusted and fire-blackened hinges present, but it still felt like a different world to move from the keep’s dingy corridors and into the open air of the courtyard beyond.

  Dappled light played over the blasted cobbles, dawn’s first rays mingling with the leaves above to splash shadows across every surface. I walked slowly, drawing the cloak tight around my shoulders and letting the fur kiss my skin. It reminded me of Jacyntha’s Cat-Bear companion, even now likely waking to a full bowl of milk and loving attention from Vera’s aunt back in the village.

  I ascended to the walls, looking out over the plains beyond the castle. The World Tree had long since finished its cataclysmic transformation, the seeds ending their dance across the heavens while we had been surveying the castle and collecting valuables from the dead yesterday. Now, night had come to a close as well, and the morning of a new day began in earnest.

  Far below me, light caught in the beads of dew and small puddles of water that collected on the muddy ground, reflecting over the bodies and carcasses strewn about haphazardly. Further out, I saw heaps of the dead marking the battle with the Council of Aerlyn’s soldiers. Strange how expressive the lifeless fields had become.

  I saw one poor bastard glancing over at me from his post on the wall – a single rebel left to stand sentry over the empty field of battle. We shared grave nods, and I walked on, making my way slowly to the edge of the wall near the missing gate, looking down upon the remains of the barbican, bodies strewn amongst the rubble, most killed by my own hand. I saw the corpse-white skin of a face, partially obscured by their helmet, lying beneath a slab of masonry, empty eyes accusing.

  I looked away. Back to the forest in the distance, neat canopy standing tall and speckled by sunlight. I inhaled deeply, breath misting in the air before me as the chill of night still lingered.

  Fuck it all, what a day.

  It seemed to me like it had gone on for weeks. Days and days of struggle and excitement, condensed into a few bells of mad chaos. I’d grown substantially in my class, from both violence and the seed, but despite all of that, I still felt like a failure.

  I couldn’t help but replay the many near-death experiences from yesterday. Varice, Markas, the archer, the mage…with each one I’d nearly died, and with each one I’d been saved by circumstance more than my own merits.

  The archer I had fought off myself at least, though still it had required a sudden rush of strength from my previously ignored levels. That was a recurring theme. I could barely count how many times I’d relied on last-moment surges of new strength to help me survive; the Tarkenzi Maned Wolf back in the foothills of the Unclaimed Peaks, Francis D’Sware in the foothills of the Dragon-Spines, now yesterday’s battle, too.

  I tried to fall back on one of Jorge's folksy sayings; ‘If it ain’t broke, it don’t need fixing’, but that was hollow. I knew I wouldn’t always have spare attributes and skills to fall back on, and besides, this was about more than surviving a fight. This was about a consistent chain of bad decisions when heading into them.

  Even ignoring the archer and this frustrating tendency, the rest of my near-deaths from the last battle were all averted by last moment interventions by my allies. Without that, I’d not be here to appreciate the freshness of the air, nor the subtle play of light from the tree canopy above.

  I tried to examine each decision in the causal chain that had led to those moments of helplessness. To rely on others was inevitable, I knew that, but it was another thing to be entirely dependent on them. It was possible that a true battlefield was simply so chaotic that death came and went a hundred times over, and being saved by your comrades was the only way you could survive…but that wasn’t a satisfying conclusion either.

  In truth, I’d not considered how my spur of the moment decision to slip away from the duke might play out beyond the first few moments. I’d deluded myself into thinking I could sneak off, but hadn’t even had a workable plan once I was in the air, falling from the side of the pyramid. I also hadn’t considered the full ramifications of choosing to fight against Varice as well.

  Sure, it might have ended worse had I actually followed the original plan and allowed myself to be locked up with the other god-touched, but that was post-hoc justification. I hadn’t known that Markas and then Jorge would arrive back when I’d made my decision, and it could have gone a lot worse very easily.

  This was a pattern. As I looked back over my journey, I saw the same pattern repeated over and over. Failure to plan, failure to consider all variables, and then frantic spiralling in the moment when things went wrong. It had worked so far, but only because I had the help and support of such capable companions. I had survived in spite of my actions, rather than because of them.

  As I stood upon that wall looking out over a dead plain filled with dead men, drenched in my long cloak and dour of mood, the chill wind from the north caressed the stubbly half of my head and shared in my bitterness.

  My thoughts churned like the mud below, and while I had gained greater clarity of myself, I did not like what I saw.

  *Nathlan*

  Nathlan crested the broken wall and wondered over to where Lamb stood, swallowed in the folds of an oversized cloak. The sun had risen high in the sky and was starting to warm the land below, and that chill wind had ceased its bitter bite.

  He looked to be mulling something over, and based on his sour expression, it was nothing good. He stepped lightly over until he stood beside the wolf-lean man and surveyed the bleak landscape beneath them for a time before speaking.

  “You look concerned.”

  “I’m deep in thought,” Lamb replied.

  “I did not know that was a skill you possessed,” he replied evenly, and Lamb shot him a withering glare. He wasn’t overly perturbed by it, but the lack of a quick smile afterwards told him that the man was indeed struggling with something heavy. Not entirely surprising considering the events of the last day, however.

  “What bothers you, Lamb?” he asked instead.

  The man sighed. “I almost died yesterday,” he said. “Several times.”

  “As did we all,” was Nathlan’s calm response, and Lamb shook his head incessantly, like a horse jumping at the bite of a fly.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “That’s not it, Nathlan, you don’t get it. I nearly got myself killed, over and over. Not by blind luck or circumstance, but by the choices I made.”

  His voice was hard, and Nathlan recognised well the blade in those words, aimed at Lamb himself. Sharp indeed was the truth that cut its wielder, after all.

  “I keep doing it, too. I run headlong into danger and then act surprised when it all goes to shit. Hells, I can barely remember to check my gods-damned status and assign my own attributes before a fight. I consistently fail to plan, and while I like to try to ‘adapt in the moment’...it’s a crock of shit. I think I’m just scared of admitting that I don’t know what to do and how the fuck I’m supposed to do it, so I ignore that and try anyway.”

  He sighed, putting a hand out to the stone of the wall, flinching at the contact. Nathlan wouldn’t be surprised if he’d been out here since dawn. Being lost in thoughts of self-recrimination was nothing new to him though, so he took a few moments to parse the man’s thoughts before responding.

  “That may be true, Lamb,” he started, and saw the man slump at the acknowledgment. “That may be true - I do not know what is inside your mind, and it looks like you do not either. But what I do know is that, whether or not you know what you are doing, you do achieve what you set out to.”

  He frowned, and Nathlan made a conscious effort to continue evenly without looking. He’d never liked talking about his emotions, it was something that he’d struggled with since a boy. These were not his emotions though, which made it easier, but if he looked to his friend, the pressure would still be uncomfortable. Instead, he focused on the churned field beyond the keep.

  “You made it to outpost thirteen to meet us, on your own and without a class, I might add. You killed Francis D’Sware and made it farther than I did in that tournament in the mountains. You managed to reach the 2nd tier before I did, despite not being native to this world, and you made not one, but three successive artifacts, one of them so powerful that I suspect you will carry it into the 3rd tier, too. The rebels have been calling you Red-Spear, you know?"

  It seemed that Lamb did not in fact know that, for he looked round in surprise. "I've earned a name?" he asked in a shocked whisper, before a grin broke out across his face, bright as the winter sun.

  Nathlan smiled. "Indeed. I overheard two talking as I came this way, though I cannot say if it has spread beyond those two yet."

  Lamb hummed with his head cocked to one side. "Not the best, but far from the worst, I suppose."

  "I was referred to as 'the gangly one', so I think you should count your blessings," he joked.

  Lamb laughed. "Anyway, I think you were in the middle of saying nice things about me?" he said with an impish grin, and Nathlan snorted before marshalling his thoughts once more.

  "You helped a friend retake her homeland from a tyrant, and were a crucial part of the battle where we defeated not only the premier power in this small kingdom, but the leader that rules the whole conglomeration of nations besides.”

  He turned to his friend then, gripping his shoulder in the way he had seen Jorge do so many times before. “Lamb, you’ve done more in these last six months than almost anyone, and that has not been a coincidence.”

  Lamb turned to look out at the fields himself then, not quite shaking off the hand on his shoulder, but definitely turning away from it. Nathlan narrowed his eyes a fraction. He wasn’t an expert on social cues, but that didn’t seem to be a sign that the man was convinced.

  “I wasn’t pivotal in many of those achievements, Nathlan. And I would have died a hundred times over without you, Vera, Jorge, and the barbarians. Hells, look at the battle yesterday! I needed saving at least five times. I was more a hindrance than a help, and nearly cost us the battle.”

  “Oh come off it,” Nathlan said, surprising even himself with the vehemence of it. The shorter man looked around, and Nathlan found himself noting their height difference once more. Shrouded as he was in the large cloak, powerful shoulders and arms hidden from view, it was easy to imagine the man as smaller right now.

  “You nearly died a handful of times…so what? We all did, Lamb,” Nathlan continued. “I saved Jacyntha from some duellist on these very walls last night. Sadrianna knocked me away from an arrow I’d not seen coming, and Jacyntha nearly cut a man in half as he was trying to flank Sadrianna. If he wasn't in two pieces, he would surely have killed Sadrianna, no matter how gracefully she can move.”

  He pointed over to where each of those incidents had occurred as he spoke, jabbing his finger to reinforce the point. “Vera killed the duke and saved us all, and Jorge supposedly pulled a gigantic tree from the ground to protect us from the Crimson Company, not to mention a dozen other such moments.”

  Lamb nodded hesitantly, and then something occurred to Nathlan and he barrelled on. “As a matter of fact, I recall you and Jacyntha leaping from the walls and charging a whole army just to save Vera from that terrifying mage. If you are worried that you are only a liability needing rescue, then is Vera not the same?”

  “Well no, of course not,” he begrudgingly admitted.

  “Exactly!” Nathlan exclaimed. “Look Lamb, I understand; yesterday was awful and frustrating, and terrifying. It is natural to feel conflicted after something like that. But you have allies. Of course you need to lean on them. Was it not you that once told me that the most important choice you make is who you surround yourself with?”

  He shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t know…sounds smart though, whoever told you that,” he said with a small smile.

  Nathlan grinned to recognise more of the man he knew in that expression, and carried on. “Exactly. You saved us, and we save you. That is the deal. That is what allies are for. That is what friendship is, is it not?”

  The question was rhetorical, but the man answered with a weary sigh and a nod anyway. “You’re getting wise in your old age, Nathlan,” he said.

  “You said you would journey to the Leviathan Coast with me after this was over. Do you still hold to that?” he asked, bracing himself for hesitation or rejection; promises withdrawn and an embarrassed chain of excuses.

  Lamb just looked over, though. “Aye, I do. Wouldn’t mind a few days to deal with all of…well, this,” he said, gesturing broadly at the blood-soaked field before them. ”But yes.”

  “Good,” Nathlan replied, trying to couch his relief beneath the noble bearing he’d been taught to wear in times of discomfort. “Well, I expect you to nearly die a few more times over the course of that journey, and likewise, I will be relying on you saving my life when I am in the same situation. We look out for each other – that is the choice that matters most.”

  Lamb nodded again, eyes once more far-away, but his forehead was no longer scrunched in a frown, and his mouth no longer twisted like he was tasting lemon. “Aye…we choose to trust,” he muttered to himself, but Nathlan heard the words anyway, and he remembered their conversation back in the Titan’s Crown when he’d first shared with the man his past.

  He once more clapped him on the shoulder, and they both looked out over the field for long moments, the silence no longer strained and heavy.

  "It will be different though," Lamb said, surprising Nathlan with the conviction in his voice. "We won't have Jorge and Vera, i'd wager, so there'll be nobody to pull us out of the fire when we mess everything up again. We'll need to be clinical and actually plan things, Nathlan."

  He looked down at Lamb, finding the man's imploring gaze fixed on his. "No mistakes this time," he said.

  Nathlan sighed. "We cannot guarentee that, Lamb, as you well know. We will make plenty of mistakes."

  "Okay, fine," Lamb allowed. "No clusterfucks though. No getting into fights unless we know the costs ahead of time."

  "And a way out," Nathlan agreed.

  They shared a smile, turning again to the dead fields beyond the wall.

  “So…tell me about the new class,” Lamb asked. “And our plans for the coast.”

  Nearly a bell later, they headed back inside, after discussing both Nathlan’s class and future plans, and what had happened inside the keep, the ruin below it, and how the assault had started once Lamb had followed the duke.

  It was fascinating – and awful – to hear of Lamb’s adventures below the earth, as well as Jorge’s planned sacrifice. Nathlan had delighted in pointing out how Lamb had once more saved Jorge, who had in turn saved all of them, and so Lamb was, in a very real sense, responsible for their victory.

  The man had waved it off, but Nathlan could see his words had had the desired effect. Surprising how a few simple words could help to change one’s perspective, and surprising also how one could ignore certain information in service of a belief without ever recognising their own bias.

  It wasn’t until they were walking back through the keep doorway that a thought occurred to Nathlan, and he turned to Lamb with curiosity.

  “What ever happened to that other God-Touched? ‘Jason’ was it?” he asked.

  Lamb’s eyes widened comically, and his face formed a perfect circle before he laughed. “We’ll have to ask Jorge, I suppose. Once the old bastard finally wakes up, that is.”