Late evening brought a misty drizzle that became hail and snow. Winter was here.

Sorath’s inner nostrils hurt in the cold, a headache throbbing. His hands were numb by the time they arrived at their Mines and Quarries in a walled-off recess between two mountains. Cliff faces here were steep, bare, and oddly geometrical, like compacted square and hexagonal columns. High above, untapped veins of gemrock glittered in the ambient mana.

Guards in leather, holding longbows, nodded at Freya as she alone came out of Stealth. The gatehouse’s portcullises lifted without a metallic groan or screech. Construction quality here was much better than their outpost’s, and the architecture had more style, not as blocky and random. But the Jailhouse was a big fat stone oblong between two Pit Quarries.

Gwyn placed Valia on a single bed inside a cell room four strides wide and six deep. The only entertainment was five books on a shelf, and the stone lavatory and basin looked to have Sanitation and Waterflow enchantments. A crystal torch was bolted on the wall. Best of all, the window was wide, tall, and double-glazed, although barred on the inside, overlooking a Quarry. Honestly, this wasn’t terrible accommodation for prisoners.

Gwyn tucked Valia in, saying, “You get some rest. We’ll talk in the morning. I’ll make sure Sora doesn’t try to sneak in here.”

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.” One last time, Sorath glanced at Valia’s resting face, feeling nothing. “Gwyn, I’m only going to say this once. She’s nothing to me. I’d kill her if I have to.” He walked out into a corridor lined with cast iron doors on one wall.

Gwyn fastened a lock and waved her wand. “You’d also kill me if you have to.” Her loopy mana was loopier than usual.

“Only if I have to.”

“So…” She poked his arm. “I’m also nothing to you? After everything I’ve done?”

If this was the girlfriend experience, maybe he hadn’t missed out on anything. He huffed in exasperation, gently squeezed her warmer hand. “I’ve said before, you’ve grown on me over the past couple days.”

“Is that what you’re going to put in your journal?”

“Probably, and I’m sure there’ll be many entries which mention you, especially when you’re following me around like this.”

She pouted. “I’m not following you. You’re following me.” She put up her hood.

“Okay.” His chuckles echoed as her Stealth activated.

Prisoners in shackles were pulling a large sled of stone cubes toward a stockpile. Guards of various classes oversaw the work, directing in silence. No brutal whipping or antagonizing shouting. And the prisoners were uninjured and decently nourished. This certainly wasn’t as brutal as Sorath had imagined. Really, no different than Cyesten’s labor sites.

Sorath scanned the scene for a face like Madrog’s, finding none. Oh well.

They came to a single-story two-bedroom dwelling fifty strides from the Jailhouse. Gwyn went to prepare dinner, and the dining room was plain as it could be—a stone table and five stone chairs. Freya was sitting at the end, filling out paper work. “Complaints,” she drawled, “from both prisoners and my followers. Mostly demands for warm clothing.”

He sat. “And your response?” He wasn’t sure why he was asking.

“A batch of cloaks should be ready by tomorrow night.”

“From the farms?”

“Yes, you’re very deductive.”

He ignored her sarcasm. “That’s pretty far from here. Why are your bases so spread out?”

“To secure territory. It may be risky now, but it’s a needed risk. I assume you don’t know there is a worldwide announcement from the gods when our faction establishes.”

“I didn’t. They don’t teach this at school.”

“I’m not surprised,” she said wryly. “Why would Desiric teach the young how to break away from his kingdom? He would be a farce of a king.”

He hadn’t ever viewed his schooling from this angle. Control. Just what else had they left out? Probably a lot.

Freya scribbled a fancy signature. “Sorath, for all your life, you’ve been little more than a serf, but if you’re going to have a place in my future court, then you need to start thinking like a ruler. Look at the painting as a whole rather than getting caught up on the singular brush strokes. This world, this existence, is a grand game designed by the gods. We are the players.”

Headmaster Yassemir had said similar during his graduation speech but not in this grand, detached perspective. Most of what Greenwood School of Adventuring taught was focused on the brush strokes.

Sorath asked, “What’s the end goal?”

“Whatever you want it to be. That’s the beauty of it.”

Beauty. He wouldn’t call it that. “What’s yours?”

“I’ve told you. Establish my faction, overthrow Desiric.”

“What happens to Cyesten’s people?”

Freya was quiet while she read through the next complaint, her elven eyes skimming, her mana calm. “That’s for them to decide. What’s your end goal, Sorath? Do you have one?”

“A few days ago, my goal was to pay off my debt. Now… not really.”

She was writing a long sentence in the reply box. “Let’s say you never ran into Gwyn, you’re still Hyera’s assassin, and you pay off your debt. What would you do then?”

It suddenly occurred to him that he could no longer see his life moving forward without Gwyn. She was his support, his healer. A Shaman with legendary gear and two ultimate skills. Irreplaceable. He needed her—for dungeons.

His eyelids blinked rapidly. His shoulders jerked. “Something to do with my professions. I like food. I’d open a restaurant at Greenwood.”

Gwyn walked in with a platter of grilled chicken breasts and spicy sauce. Smoky aroma filled the room. “Eat up, you two,” she sang. “And what was that about opening a restaurant at Greenwood? Are you planning to leave, Sora?”

In a playful voice, Freya said, “Don’t worry. We were speaking hypothetically.”

“Thought so.” Gwyn patted his back.

He chewed a slice of juicy, tender chicken. The sauce and herb seasoning was perfection. His stomach grumbled for more, and he obliged, moaning as he chewed another slice. Before he knew it, he had devoured two whole breasts. He washed it down with cups of hot water, no soup today. He patted his sloshing stomach.

Gwyn giggled. “Delicious?”

“Yeah. Better than Torrel’s Restaurant.” He wiped his mouth. An errant thought pricked him. “You two haven’t mentioned Magnair since the fight. I thought you’d celebrate.”

“Because,” Freya said, “he’s most likely alive.”

He frowned. “Really? I stabbed him through the heart. Gwyn’s bolt slit his throat. He likely bled out in seconds.”

“Don’t forget, one only needs a thread of life to survive. Don’t assume he wasn’t healed the instant after he recalled. You should’ve decapitated him. Why didn’t you?”

The answer wasn’t anything complicated. “He was a head taller than me. Stabbing him was easier.”

Freya’s eyes rolled.

“He was freakishly tall!” Gwyn exclaimed, her laughter chiming.

Freya sighed. “Anyway, we got out alive—that’s all that matters. You did well, Sorath.”

“Yep,” Gwyn said, “we should go open-world dungeon-diving again. After winter, of course.”

“Sure. What do we do now?”

“We wait,” Freya said.

Fair enough. Nothing more to say, he stood and sauntered off to wash up for the night. The bathroom shower was low-pressure and mildly warm, worse than the shower at his family’s adobe. Not his family’s adobe. Just the adobe, sold off to the neighborhood community to do away with. Was it even still standing? Sorath would bet that they had torn it down to build something new. But so what. They could do as they wanted. They had payed far too much gold for it.

On a mattress harder than rock, Sorath drifted off to sleep. Dreams came and went, none too nightmarish until he found himself lucidly walking down hallways inside Greenwood Keep. His movements weren’t his own. This body wasn’t his own. But these eyes and ear were his, superimposed over someone else’s.

Quick footsteps echoed from behind. “My Lord!”

This body turned, its lips moving. Hyera’s voice gruffed, “Yes, what is it?”

The young lad was in chainmail armor. Town Guard. He spoke between haggard breaths, “We’re under attack from the east.”

Hyera growled like a bear. He sprinted down the hallway, around the corner, down a flight of steps, into the main foyer and reception where nobles and their families were sheltering. He barged open the Keep’s front doors, and a snow-blanketed Greenwood momentarily blinded Sorath’s eyes. Snowfall was dense. Clouds were dark gray.

As Hyera turned to face the eastern Town Wall, the dream dissolved into a black expanse, but not before Sorath saw the outline of a horned skull in the clouds flash black and crimson light. Then he was falling. He jolted awake, drenched in cold sweat, someone gripping him by the shoulders.

“Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.”

“Gwyn?” His voice was hoarse.

“Who else? Did you have a nightmare or another vision?”

“The same vision of Greenwood being attacked by ice elementals.”

She heaved a deep breath. “Ice elementals aren’t that scary. You said the attack gets repelled, right?”

“Yeah, but…”

“But what?”

“But you woke me up too soon. The skull in the sky was flashing red and black this time. Last time it wasn’t.” He wiped moisture off his forehead, massaged his brow. This couldn’t be happening.

She lied down next to him. “Sorry. You were tossing and flailing and groaning in pain.”

“It’s fine. Next time just let it run the course, got it?”

“Got it. Sorry, again.” She hugged him.

The feel of her silk nightclothes against his skin and her coconut scent were soothing to the soul, and he had a much better time drifting back to sleep. He could get used to this.

But the moment only lasted a few heartbeats before freezing winds lashed his cheeks and eyes. He was standing under an enlarged sun hovering low in a cloudless sky. Flat ice stretched on for as far as the eye could see in all directions. This was not Greenwood. This was somewhere far in the frozen north beyond the Cyesten’s faction boundary, far north of Iceward Castle and even Northwind Town.

There, a hundred strides away, mana gathered into swirling sapphire particles. Something was spawning. A beam of pale-blue light shot into the sky. More than just a something, definitely not an elemental. In a crater sat a round gem the size of a head.

Sorath was running, his boots skidding forward on each footfall.

The gem was egg-shaped and warm on the surface. The inner facets were shaped to give the surface an appearance of scales on a fish. Inside, a core of mana was beating once every two seconds, as though alive.

It was alive.

An egg.

The undeveloped, slumbering mind was not just that of any other beast. The mind had depth of a Human or an Elf, not just a puddle of base sentience. The being inside was divinely blessed. Intelligent. Capable of complex magics. Able to commune with the gods.

The flat white landscape faded to black. He woke less violently than before.

Gwyn’s finger was twirling strands of his hair. “So is Greenwood fine?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? Then what was that? You were breathing heavily and rolling around.”

“I was at the frozen north, on an ice sheet.” He could still feel the cold… because it was getting colder in here. He hugged her closer. “I found a sapphire gem which was really an egg of some kind. The thing inside had a mind like ours.”

Bubbles of excitement floated to the surface of her mana. “How big was it?”

He yawned, “My head, but a tad bigger.”

She wiggled in his embrace. “Oh, that’s a dragon egg. We should probably go get it before Desiric’s men do, assuming your vision is accurate.” She giggled. “Good work, Sora.”

“Any time,” he yawned into her neck, then floated back to sleep.