(Seventhday of the Second week of Azonro, 670 A.C)

  Kletz woke up slowly, confused for reasons he could not articulate for several moments. Then, he remembered: he was supposed to be dead.

  Even awake, he struggled to pry his eyes open and take in his surroundings. Above him was the open night sky, which meant someone had managed to move him since there was no tree blocking his view. The three waves of the ninth constellation Vessa shone above him, making him wonder how long he’d been asleep. Was it still the same day?

  He was laid on what felt like a scratchy blanket, but it was better than the bare ground. No pillow, but he supposed he should just be happy to be alive. Speaking of which...

  Tentatively, he felt along his side. The pain was practically nonexistent compared to what he remembered from before he passed out, but even still, there was a bandage wrapped around his midsection. He could only hope that it was clean.

  Warmth and light radiated toward him from his right, and when he turned his head, he found a small fire crackling several feet away from him. Which meant that whoever managed to move him had stayed with him as well.

  There was movement on the other side of the fire. At first, Kletz just thought it was the heat of the flames distorting the air. But then he saw the light glint off a set of eyes, and he just about jumped out of his skin.

  Beyond the fire, a griffin laid on the ground, watching him. It was big--a good deal larger than Kletz--but not as big as the griffins he’d seen while traversing the base of the Oavalen mountain range. It had to still be a fledgling, then. But that didn’t explain why it was here or why it was staring at him.

  Kletz was getting very sick of being stared at.

  The griffin turned its head and lifted its wing. Kletz realized the griffin wasn’t alone--there was a silver-haired, young woman sleeping against its side. She’d been using the griffin’s wing like a blanket and had her head resting against the griffin’s shoulder. The griffin chirped, tapping its beak against the top of her head. She grunted and slowly opened her eyes.

  It took a moment for him to recognize her, but he remembered that this was the young woman he’d seen just before passing out. She was real, then? Unless the griffin was also a ghost, but how would that even work?

  She stretched before sitting up and glancing over at him. When their eyes met, she perked up, any remaining traces of sleep disappearing. “You’re awake!”

  Kletz somewhat doubted that. After all, this would make much more sense if it was a dream.

  The young woman glanced at the griffin that was staring at Kletz again. She elbowed him, and Kletz wanted to shout at her and ask what in the fuck she thought she was doing hitting a griffin. “Stop glaring at him, Eko.”

  Eko chirped but did not pull his gaze away from Kletz. So this was what it was like to be stared down by a griffin. Kletz could do without it.

  “Sorry about him,” the woman said. “He gets a little protective around strangers. What’s your name?”

  Kletz cautiously pushed himself up into a sitting position. His side gave a twinge of protest, but he didn’t start bleeding out so he figured it was fine. Eko shifted slightly in what Kletz thought was it preparing to pounce on him, and he tensed. When Kletz had not been pounced on several seconds later, he allowed himself to relax slightly. “Kletz.”

  “Hello, Kletz. I’m Wanily.” She leaned forward, cocking her head. “So are you an assassin?”

  Kletz felt his brows raise. This woman was forward. “Why do you ask?”

  “Well,” she said, one hand idly petting the side of Eko’s feathered neck, “I found a bunch of weapons in your shirt. Also, there was a bag of money with your stuff and a dead woman not that far away from you when I found you. You killed her, right?”

  Kletz, at a bit of a loss, just nodded. He could still feel a couple of knives tucked into his boots, but if he threw one at Wanily now, he was certain that griffin would rip out his throat. So, he continued to just sit there, completely at Wanily’s mercy.

  “Why?” she asked.

  Kletz frowned. “What does that matter?”

  “Did you do it just for fun, then?”

  Kletz appraised her. She stared at him, hard and expectant, and eventually Kletz caved. This woman did save his life, after all. “No. She tried to kill me.”

  “Why?” Wanily asked again.

  “Not really sure,” Kletz answered. “She had me do a job for her, and when I asked her a couple questions, she just started attacking me. Kept saying, ‘The world ends with a medium’ or something like that.”

  Wanily cocked her head. “I thought I saw more magic in you than normal. So you’re a medium?”

  Kletz’s frown deepened. What was that supposed to mean? He decided he didn’t really care and focused on the fact that Wanily, apparently, knew what a medium was. “I don’t know what that is.”

  He had wondered if he was one though, hadn’t he? His client had certainly thought he was one, right? Judging by the way Wanily was looking at him, she definitely knew what a medium was and thought he was stupid for not knowing.

  “A medium is a type of specialty mage that can see the souls trapped in Gehenna,” she informed him. “At least, that’s what I’ve been told and what I’ve read about them. I’m not a medium myself so I couldn’t say.”

  Kletz inhaled sharply. Was that what was happening? He knew about specialty mages--enough to say he knew they existed--but he hadn’t known the specifics. So, he was a medium that was seeing the souls the old gods hated enough to trap in endless mists. No wonder all of them were crazy. They’d all essentially been in solitary confinement for at least six hundred years. The old gods stopped putting people in Gehenna after the war with the new gods, after all.

  “Do you know how to make it stop?” Kletz asked, turning more fully toward Wanily.

  She frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I only started seeing these ghosts a few weeks ago,” he said. “They follow me everywhere. Screaming and crying and just staring, endlessly staring. How do I make it so I don’t see them?”

  Wanily’s frown only deepened. “Well, I guess it would make sense that if you didn’t know you were a specialty mage and didn’t even know what a medium was, you wouldn’t know about the power. But I don’t get what you mean. You should be able to just kinda... think about it and turn it off, you know? That’s what accounts from other mediums say from what I’ve read, at least.”

  Kletz, giving her the benefit of the doubt, tried it. He glanced by his feet, where even now a ghost with blue hair stood and stared at him. He thought about her not being there, and when that failed, thought simply of no longer seeing her. But that did nothing either.

  “It’s not working,” he said, turning back to Wanily. “Are you sure?”

  “Well, not sure sure,” Wanily said, shrugging. “I can’t tell you ‘cause I’m not a medium.”

  Kletz grunted. “Who are you, then? Why did you help me?”

  “Those are two very separate questions.” Wanily continued petting Eko’s neck, eyes cast to the side in a thoughtful manner. Finally, she shrugged again. “You needed help. It was as simple as that, really.”

  “Even though you thought I was an assassin?” he asked, genuinely baffled. Why would she help someone that might kill her? If Kletz had less sense than he did and had tried to murder her despite her griffin’s presence, he might die for it but he would manage to end her life.

  She sighed and looked away for a long moment. With her frown and furrowed brow, she seemed upset, but Kletz could only wonder why. All he knew was Eko was staring him down again, body tense and ready to snap forward at a moment’s notice. If it really was protective of Wanily, it probably didn’t appreciate Kletz making her upset.

  “I’ve met a lot of people,” she finally said. “Some of them had killed other people, too. And usually, they had a reason, you know? They were defending themselves or defending others or even just trying to get by themselves. But even if you kill just for fun or whatever--you’re still a person, too. I had the means to help you, and I did.”

  “And if I go on and kill someone else? Would you not feel any guilt for their death, too?”

  “Your decisions are your own,” Wanily said softly, just audible over the crackle of the fire. “Just as my decisions are my own. If you decide to hurt someone after I helped you, you made that decision. I would probably still feel a little guilty,” she conceded, “but in the end, I did what was right. And that counts for something.”

  Kletz grunted. A bit altruistic for his tastes, but he had to give her kudos for being such an optimist about things. She was wrong though--doing the right thing hardly counted for anything. The old gods didn’t care whether people killed each other, and the new gods didn’t intervene if they gave a damn about it, either. So in the end, if there was no punishment for being a terrible person, why should Kletz or anyone else worry about their actions?

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  Kletz pushed the thoughts from his mind, figuring there were more important matters at hand. “Are you a Wanderer, then?” They were about the only people he knew that were so quick to help others. At least, the genuine Wanderers--those posing as them usually had more nefarious intentions.

  Wanily shook her head. “I’m someone who wanders, but I’m not part of the Wandering People. I’m trying to master old magic and become the Archmage.”

  Oh, that wasn’t a lofty goal at all. But she did have silver hair--she had to know something about magic despite how young she looked. “Sounds easy enough.”

  Wanily chuckled. “Well, it really hasn’t been. But it’s alright, I’m getting there. And in a couple years, I should be old enough to attend the magic college in Tiranda.” Wanily smiled, but her eyes remained downcast.

  There was something more to that statement, but Kletz wasn’t one to pry. He would just be grateful that Wanily had healed him and not stolen any of his stuff--until he was out of her hair, he wasn’t about to press his luck.

  Kletz rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger and sighed. “How long was I out for?”

  Wanily brightened at the change in subject. “A little over two days. I cleaned and bandaged your wound, then gathered the ingredients for a potion good for cuts. I wasn’t sure you were going to make it at first, but you pulled through until I was able to get the potion down your throat. Though, I wasn’t able to find the ingredients to make the potion very strong. Sorry about that.”

  “That’s... alright,” Kletz said. He was a professional killer, and even he was surprised with Wanily’s flippance when describing how he had almost died. She was young to be so callous toward death already.

  He found himself starting to wonder about her story. Maybe she was from the north, where the war still raged between his own homeland and a few other countries. Or maybe she was from Fris, where war had ended not very long ago. Though, she was probably too young to remember the war in Fris, so Kletz struck out that idea. Neither case would explain her golden eyes, either. Kletz didn’t care much about the world past what he needed to get by, but even he knew that on the other side of the globe was a land that inexplicably turned the eyes of anyone who was born there gold. So if Wanily was born on the eastern continent, why was she wandering around here with a dream to learn magic?

  In the silence that fell over them, Kletz debated trying to get more details from her about her life, but ultimately decided it was none of his fucking business. Instead, he wanted to know more about the griffin that currently seemed to be trying to kill Kletz with just its eyes. “So how’d you tame a griffin?”

  Eko let out a sharp whistling sound, which Kletz assumed to be a snort of air passing through the nostrils in its beak. Wanily laughed. “I didn’t tame him. He’s not a pet. Eko is like... my brother and best friend wrapped up in one.”

  Kletz felt his brow raise. Eko seemed to preen under Wanily’s words, lifting his head higher and shifting his wings. “But... he follows you around, then?”

  “Well, duh,” Wanily said. She smirked, looking at Eko from the corner of her eye. “How else is he supposed to keep me out of trouble?”

  If it was possible, Eko raised his chin higher. He managed to radiate an air of smugness, but how he did that without a face that could make proper expressions, Kletz didn’t know.

  Kletz grunted. Tentatively, he poked at his side again, but found that it really didn’t hurt all that badly. Wanily’s potion must have healed him most of the way, though the wound had been deep for a single, weak potion to manage to patch up. All the times he got cut or stabbed in the military taught him that it could be detrimental to drink potions back-to-back, especially the same kind of potion. Wanily said he’d been out for a couple days, though, so he should be able to have another healing potion.

  “So, do you want to find another medium?” Wanily asked.

  Kletz frowned. “What?”

  “You know, to figure out how to turn off seeing ghosts. They have to be pretty crazy, right? All the accounts I’ve read about Gehenna say that people go crazy pretty quickly in there. So if we find another medium, they can teach you how to turn it off.”

  “What’s this ‘we’?” Kletz asked, more bemused than anything. Wanily had already saved his life--why would she want to help him any further?

  Wanily shrugged. “I’ve never met a medium before--well, except for you. But you seem to be a pretty bad medium considering you didn’t even know what one was until five minutes ago, so I’d like to meet one that actually knows what they’re talking about.” She smiled at him, then. “And I want to help. You... are okay with me helping you, right?”

  Strange of her to ask, Kletz thought, but then again, he was a professional killer. Maybe Wanily had the sense to be wary of him after all.

  Kletz hadn’t traveled in a group since he was part of the military. Two people wasn’t really a group, but still--he wasn’t used to having other people around for a prolonged period of time. Kletz was a lone, apex predator. His first and last instinct was to kill. He didn’t do groups.

  But... Wanily had saved his life. Kletz didn’t often feel indebted to others, but he was quickly finding this was one of the few exceptions. She had suspected his profession and helped him anyway. That, more than anything, made Kletz hesitant to dismiss her.

  That and the griffin that was glaring at Kletz from over Wanily’s shoulder. Kletz was pretty sure that if he refused her, he was going to find out exactly why griffins were so feared.

  “Do you know where we could find a medium?” Kletz asked.

  Wanily hummed with thought. She climbed to her feet and moved over to a large pack, rummaging through it until she pulled out a small book. Opening it, she flipped through the pages, angling the book so that she could read by the light of the fire. Kletz, unable to quite make out what she was looking at, waited for whatever the point of this was.

  “Well, there’s a town not too far to the east,” Wanily said, peering at the book. Must be full of maps, then.

  Kletz sighed. “That’s not going to work.”

  Wanily turned her curious gaze onto him. “Why not?”

  “I just got done with a job there. Would rather not go back for a while, in case someone saw me.”

  “Oh,” Wanily said, scrunching her nose in obvious distaste. She returned to scrutinizing her maps for a moment before announcing, “There’s another town to the north. We can at least see if anyone there knows of a medium, even if there’s none in the town.” She grimaced. “Which, you know, there probably isn’t. Specialty mages are pretty rare.”

  And Kletz had killed one just a few days ago. Someone who, as far as Kletz could tell, was kind and just trying to figure out what was happening to both himself and the people he was seeing.

  He almost felt guilty about it. But Kletz’s would-be killer had wanted Hansen dead, had promised a hefty sum in return for the deed, and that was all that Kletz had cared about. It was all that he still cared about, really.

  “We can go north,” Kletz said, nodding.

  Wanily nodded back. “You should try to get some more rest, then,” she said, tucking her book back into her pack. “And I would rather hit the road with a decent night’s sleep, too.”

  Kletz waited until Wanily had settled back against Eko’s side before he laid himself back down on his borrowed blanket. She put too much trust in him for his tastes, but with Eko right there, she didn’t really have to worry about Kletz slitting her throat in her sleep. Maybe Kletz should be more paranoid that she had some type of ulterior motive for helping him, but if she tried to betray him--well. Kletz wasn’t going to die alone.

  Wanily was already awake when Kletz eventually got up. She had some dried fruits with her, which she shared with Kletz, before she handed him his pack and his sack of money from his last job. When she turned around to pack her own things away, Kletz tested the weight of the sack in his hand, but if she had taken any of it, he couldn’t tell. He shrugged to himself and threw the sack in with his other belongings.

  His side felt pretty good, considering the wound had almost killed him. He found he was able to easily keep pace with Wanily’s shorter strides as they began to make their way across the field to the road. When they got closer, Wanily stopped to wrap her arms around Eko’s neck and bury her face in his feathers.

  “When you get there, try to find a good spot to hide,” she said, her voice muffled by Eko’s fluff. For his part, Eko merely flicked his ear, not that Wanily was looking. “I’ll meet up with you when I can. Keep an ear out for my whistle.”

  She let go of him, and Eko chirped. He flared his wings out, bounding forward a few steps as he flapped them and took to the skies. Kletz watched him go, more uneasy than anything. Wanily was only still alive because Kletz had been afraid of Eko, and now she was sending him away? For what?

  Some of his confusion must have shown on his face because Wanily gave him a strained smile. “People aren’t always so understanding when they see a griffin following me around.”

  Which made sense but still didn’t explain why she was trusting Kletz to not murder her now that her griffin was gone. He wasn’t going to murder her because he knew he wasn’t the most charismatic and he needed someone to get him in with another medium, but he still could murder her. Unless she was that confident in her magical abilities?

  Maybe Kletz was just a violent person.

  They continued to the road, taking it further west until they reached a fork where another path stretched on toward the north. Wanily consulted her book of maps for a moment just to confirm that it was the right way to go before once again taking the lead.

  They walked in silence, which was more than fine with Kletz. He allowed Wanily to stay a few paces ahead of him, unwilling to take the lead and expose his back to her. He kept a wary eye on their surroundings for any signs of wildlife or bandits, but hours later, they still hadn’t been attacked. It wasn’t like he really thought they would be, but always better to be cautious.

  A small group of ghosts, three strong, followed them. Kletz also found himself glancing at them from time to time, but it wasn’t like they were going anywhere.

  They eventually stopped for a short lunch of jerky and more dried fruits when the sun was high in the sky. The grass near the road was cropped shorter, probably due to the foot traffic, so Wanily laid out her blanket and they sat on top.

  Kletz had barely taken one bite of his jerky when Wanily said, “So you’re an assassin. Tell me about that.”

  Kletz almost choked. He coughed, pounded on his chest with a fist, and finally managed to force out, “I thought we already went over this.”

  “Not even close,” Wanily said. Then, as if to prove her point, she asked, “Are you part of a guild? Have you killed a lot of people? How did you become an assassin? What--”

  “Alright, alright, slow down,” Kletz said, holding up his free hand. Wanily snapped her mouth shut but still watched him expectantly. He floundered for a moment, wondering if he should just tell her to mind her business, but with a sigh, he finally said, “I’m not part of a guild.”

  Wanily seemed disappointed by that, but Kletz couldn’t fathom the reason. “Lame. How’d you become an assassin, then?”

  Kletz shrugged. “I used to be part of a thieves’ guild,” he admitted. “Got caught and forced into the military. Decided I didn’t want to die in a stupid war and defected. After that,” Kletz shrugged again, “figured killing and stealing were the only things I was good at. And that makes me a decent assassin.”

  “That’s stupid,” Wanily immediately responded, which only made Kletz shoot her a glare. Undeterred, she continued, “You know how to fight. There are plenty of things you can do with that.”

  “Like kill people?” Kletz drawled.

  Wanily huffed. “Like protect people.”

  Kletz snorted. “That doesn’t always tend to pay that well.”

  Wanily was silent for a moment, just watching him. Kletz scowled, but eventually she just said, “So is the pay all that you care about?”

  “Is there something else I should care about?”

  “Doing the right thing,” was Wanily’s immediate response. Were they back to this, then? “Isn’t that more rewarding than money?”

  Kletz laughed. “No one in this world cares if you do the right thing, little mage. Least of all the people that are looking to employ me.”

  “But you could care about what you do,” Wanily insisted. “Doing the right thing matters.”

  Kletz had a feeling they would just talk in circles if this conversation were to continue. He didn’t care and knew there was no higher power that did either. Wanily obviously believed that he should care, but that hardly changed the reality.

  “Agree to disagree,” he said and went back to eating his jerky.

  Wanily huffed, clearly displeased, but didn’t try to debate the point anymore. When they were both done eating, Wanily packed the blanket away and they continued north, toward whatever awaited them. Hopefully, it would include a medium.