“I don‘t want to talk about it!“ I murmured defiantly in the face of stern looks.

“Well, Lord Protector, you will have to talk about it eventually.“ Veneir threw his hands in the air exasperatedly, his veil fluttering with his shaking head. “We cannot just ignore the fact that you had to be rescued from the - what was it? Weirdwood? ...With not a single bone in your body unbroken!“

Grim stood beside him, leaning on his bow and grinning like a child on name-day. He was the one I had sent the [Bearer of Bad News] to, and instead of quietly coming to get me, a whole rescue operation had been started, with Higgins, now Captain Higgins, and Veneir at the helm. I couldn‘t have known that they had returned with their shoddy, old hulk in the meantime.

“It‘s not a big deal.“ I grumbled. “I fell after finishing my quest.“

“Fine.“ Veneir sighed. “I have work to do. There are a lot of goods to unload and the workers to oversee. I will have my hands full.“ He turned to one of the healers in the dark hold of our still improvised lazaret in the Wreckage. “Inform me immediately if his condition changes.“ With that, he waltzed out of the hold.

Grim still grinned his crooked grin. “What?“ I snapped at him.

“Nothing. Just glad to see that you are still just a man.“

“Don‘t you have work to do? With the ships returned and the rebuilding?“

“Aye, captain!“ He saluted. “That I do. It is called guarding the Lord Protector.“

My head fell back onto the surprising amount of pillows stuffed under my back and head, so I could sit at an angle.

“Don‘t I have knights for such a thing?“ I moaned. “You are hindering my healing process with your grinning.“

„They have the dog watch. Good boys.“ Grim‘s grin stretched even wider, turning a tad menacing. It was a very well-known fact that Grim hated knights with a vengeance and had some kind of history with them. Not with the ones in Ravenport, but with the concept as a whole. He knew, intellectually, that the men and women taking up the sword to defend Ravenport were brave and good people, but they had sunken considerably in his esteem since they had been knighted.

“I hate you.“ I said.

“No, you don‘t. Now, with all the kerfuffle quieted...you fell out of a tree you say?“ He asked innocently.

“I am not talking about it. I won the elemental key of air from the Roc in a competition of wits and speed. That is all you need to know.“

“Was it your wits or your speed that broke every bone in your body?“ He smiled.

“Shut up.“

„Fine. I will torture the story out of you or get you drunk enough someday. I am a [Wildstalker]. I can be very patient.“

The following silence was a short relief. Although I did not really want to be alone or anything. I just did not want to talk about the race with the Roc, which had been rather...painful, if anything. Not my finest hour, let us put it this way.

“What about the ships?“ I finally cut through the silence with the sigh of someone realizing he had lost a battle long ago and yet fought on.

“What about them?“

“Are we set for the winter?“ It was the most important question after all. We would not bring the people through a winter in the Wyld with [Hunters] and [Fishers] alone.

“As set as I would not have dreamed about, two weeks ago. Grain, tools, nails...honestly, I did not look farther than the hold filled with grain. My belly is still hurting, so full is it.“

Now I truly was relieved, although I had known as much from the small talks with Higgins and Veneir, but they had been very busy, with organizing their arrival and the aftermath as well as leading the rescue expedition into the woods.

I tried playing the whole thing down, even to myself, but deep down I knew that I truly had to be rescued. Well not strictly, I could have entered my Demesne and restored my body with precious Essence, but I had known my people to be a short walk away from me. Restoring my body always was a considerable investment of Essence, and I had been just short. I might have made it out with half a mended body. It had not seemed worth it after I had seen that I could drag myself into the safety of the giant roots of the tree I had fallen...jumped...off from.

Who would have thought that Rocs could be that competitive? And would stoop so low as to sabotage the competition for their own gains? Everyone? Just me in the dark? Fuck.

I did not want to talk about it, even with myself.

My legs were completely wrapped up and stabilized with wooden splints, as was my torso to keep me from bumping my bruised, cracked, and broken ribs too much. Only my right shoulder and arm were relatively unharmed, even if the skin of my hand had been shaved off by me trying to stop my final fall grasping onto the metal links of Zero. I had lost my grip once the blood had made my hand and the chain too slippery.

A fact the chain golem seemed to take very personal. Zero was moping in self-deprecation and guilt and had not left my side. He was curled up on a chair to my right, his headpiece stuffed under the folds of the wrapped-up rest of his body. He even was shaking lightly, or so it seemed to me.

“Hey, it‘s okay buddy.“ I said lightly to him. “I am fine. Zero, look at me. You cannot fly and I cannot fly. We did our best, didn‘t we? And made it out alive, which is all that counts.“

His spiked and wickedly bladed head rose from the mount of chain and looked at me with unsure movements, then the whole chain shook again, as the head was stuffed under the rest of it with a rattle.

“I have seen a lot of things I could never have imagined back home.“ Grim said. “A guilty chain is not even at the top of my list.“

“Tell me about it.“ I sighed.

The hulk that had returned from the markets of the city-states to the west and north of the Wyld was an old design. Hundreds of years old, even, if the sailors were to be believed. They had stopped building ships like this long ago, and while you could see a hulk here and there in the bigger ports still, it was more thanks to the incredible storage space than of its sailing capabilities. Which were akin to, as Higgins had called it, ‘driving a block of stone up a mountain with goats pulling the other way.‘

But here, in the cold autumn air, lying higher and higher in the unruly waters of Shipwreck Bay with each sack of grain being heaved over to the pier and each box of tools being handed to the masses of citizen eager to get ahold of them, she was a majestic queen of the seas bringing food and hope to the displaced and sheltering.

My elation was just slightly blunted by the constant pain in my mending bones. My improved Core Skills worked wonders for the time I needed to heal, and only a few days in I already was limping around with the help of a couple of crutches, but I could not really be a part of the enormous amount of work that suddenly was necessary.

No one moaned or said anything, everybody threw their all into it, but once again I felt detached. To be fair, until now most of the work that had been done on the daily had been somewhat ineffective. The Wreckage had been secured and made winter-ready a long time ago, at least for the number of people we currently had. There were neverending repairs and expansion of usable structures and ships, but those were not necessary for our immediate survival.

So most of the time, the workers had extended the stairwell down the Needle to the bottom of the chasm, continuing the work of the Wyldlings, and extending the pier towards the other side of Shipwreck Bay.

Now we had grain that needed to be stored. Specialized tools for the craftsmen, who suddenly needed places to work in. And a thousand other tiny little things that made a big difference. Nails, for example. Nails had been notoriously hard to salvage from the ships, as most of them only had a few stored for repairs, and it had not really been smart to rip them out of existing structures. We had done that, of course, where it was feasible, but we were short a lot. Nails would allow us to secure a lot of construction we previously only had been able to improvise.

A few working crews set over to the Stormplains, to expand our basecamp there with more permanent structures to house people, to build a palisade, and a proper pier so they could start cutting trees in the future. It would not be ready before the snow would put a stop to all of our endeavors, but the sooner we started with the groundwork the better.

Winter was close, you could feel it in the clear cold of the morning air.

Having Veneir and Higgins back was a godsend, more for me than for anyone else because they took the responsibilities right off my shoulders. Veneir had a talent for directing the streams of labor and goods, which made everything go that much more smoothly. The moment the workers on the Stormplains realized they needed to stay the night, dinghies arrived with tents, food, and warm blankets. There was a Skill at work there, I was sure of it, but Veneir never talked about it and I never thought to ask.

There was energy in the air - smiles all around - when you looked at how the people worked together. We had done it. Survival was a given, all of a sudden, and we were progressing. New ground was being covered, new land claimed, new resources made available, and most importantly: We had a future to work towards.

“We may be able to break stones on the Needle even if the ground freezes and the snow falls.“ Veneir said one evening, standing by my side at the railing of the Raven‘s Nest and watching the columns of workers return to the Wreckage from a day of hard work.

“It might be too slippery and dangerous, so close to the chasm.“ I mused between shallow breaths, so as not to disturb my mending ribs which still send a jolt of pain through my breast whenever I dared to breathe too much.

“Still. It might be worth the risk. Higgins told me the strong currents of both waterfalls might be enough to prevent the bay from freezing over, outside of the protected bit with the Wreckage, that is. That means that we very well might continue trading in the winter. I think I would have several buyers for whatever amount of Dragonamber you decide to sell. Might be good to be able to get more from down the chasm.“

“I see the reason, but the safety of my people will always come first. I will have to take a look first. I have not really looked at the staircase since I came here.“

“It is astounding what you can achieve if you do not care about human suffering. The bodies that the Wyldlings threw at the problem and their rigorous regime have produced a marvel of a structure.“ Veneir sneered with vitriol in his voice, muffled by his veil. “It is dangerous still, and we are much slower than them, of course, but we are making steady progress. I had been wondering if that would not be something you could help with, once properly healed, of course. You could prepare a safe path for the workers to work on, with ropes and anchors. Now I am not so sure if you will heal in time because once snow and ice get involved, even you should not take the unnecessary risk.“

“It would be my pleasure.“ I said, and it truly would be. Climbing in the mountains was exactly my kind of fun. “I will take a look soon. I must search for a creature related to fire anyway, the next elemental guardian, and the only place I can imagine it to be is down there somewhere. You haven‘t laid eyes on a volcano along your journey, have you?“

“I am afraid we did not.“ He said. “Everything leads to the bottom of the chasm, I agree. Now, if only you hadn‘t been so careless...“

“We would not have the elemental key of air with us and this discussion would not be necessary anyway. Believe me, it was the only way I saw. And let the question rest forevermore.“ I interrupted him, looking across the Shattered Lands and the foggy chasm below, where fate seemed to call me towards.