The familiar sting of a sharp blade at his throat woke him up. In confusion, he pawed at his throat. He felt pain. He was being attacked. His body seemed to react without thought, and he twisted the wrist of his attacker. A hatchet appeared in his hand, pulled from beneath his pillow. Before his hand brought the weapon down into his attacker’s skull, a familiar voice made him stop.

“Chill, chill. It’s just me. It’s just Bonny.” His eyes focused on his surroundings, taking in the scene. On the floor, a woman glared up at him. She cradled an injured wrist. His muddled brain translated her words after a second, and he sat down on his bed. He picked up a small tack, the kind used to pin something to a wall.

“Could you not have woken me up in a better way?” he asked dryly.

“I thought it was going to be funny. I didn’t think you were going to try to kill me. You spend too much time in the Wilds,” she said. Her voice sounded concerned.

He grimaced. He’d be lying if he said the same thoughts hadn’t crossed his mind. “Sorry. Do you need a restoration pill for your hand?”

“No it’s not that bad. Thank you, though.” She smirked at him. “Not going to ask how I got in?”

“Nope. Not strange for Thief to break in somewhere, is it?” he said. Now it was his turn to smirk.

“Damn Horace, he’s such a blabbermouth.”

“I assume you came about the expedition and not to see me half-naked, correct?”

She looked his shirtless form up and down before shrugging. “I’ve seen better,” she said, smiling. “But yes, I’m here about the expedition. Lucius wants everyone at the South Gate around noon.”

He grunted an affirmative. Bonny left, saying she expected him to check in with her every few days on the expedition. Apparently, she wanted to make sure he was still alive. He sat back on his bed after she was gone. She was confusing, but he wasn’t the easiest person to deal with himself. He made his way to his feet. Maybe this time the gods would let humanity win one.

He frowned at the thought. Guilt twisted his heart, souring the moment. Marshal would have loved to see this day, but instead, Ryu was the one who lived to see it. He didn’t deserve this moment. Another body in the forest, he said to himself. It was a reminder of what he’d done.

The expedition turned out to be a motley thing. Powerful Classers bunched together like gaggles of schoolgirls in a field right outside Haven’s walls, and each seemed to be doing his or her best to look more stoic than the other. Ryu spotted a man in chrome armor standing at the front of the group. That’d be War Machine. He saw another adventure that stood out, a woman clad in silks that writhed like a nest of snakes. Mercy of the Shifting Silks, he believed. He spotted one impressive Climber after another from his perch in the tree. His unease grew with each one.

At the top, everyone wanted to be the strongest, and the Fifth Ring didn’t produce the nicest characters anyways. They’d be lucky if they made it a day without a throat slit. Hells, Ryu might do it himself.

He looked away from the group. Gods, but he was already tired of them all. Chances were they’d all end up dead anyways.

A blonde man wriggled out of the group, walking straight towards Ryu’s spot in the tree. Lucius. The man was dressed like a rich man doing his best to blend in with a poor crowd, and his very walk was that of a man who believed he owned the ground beneath him. Or maybe Ryu just thought he was a pompous idiot. Probably the latter, if he was honest with himself.

“I was wondering why I couldn’t find you back there,” Lucius called with a smile.

“Almost like I did that on purpose.”

Lucius shook his head. “Is this about the other night in the bar?” he asked. “I do apologize for that. But I’m taking responsibility for this expedition, okay? Making sure the group is together is kind of my job.”

Ryu’s father, Jinn, had always told him the best way to judge a man was to look at how he treated a stranger. He supposed Lucius’s dad hadn’t told the man the same. “If I want to be there, I’ll be there. But if I’m not there… Well, suppose you know what that means,” Ryu said. Internally, he sighed. He needed to calm down, but this man just… irked him.

Lucius bowed in apology. “I can take a hint when I get one. I’ll see you some other time, Ryu. Maybe next time we can have a better talk.”

“Something like that,” Ryu muttered to himself, watching the man walk away. He felt a pain in his chest, felt the combination of his self-control and Skill war against the monster inside of him. Everybody told him he needed to leave the Wilds. They didn’t realize the Wilds would never leave him. He snorted dryly, dropping to the forest floor below.

As night started to grip the sky overhead, Ryu faced a choice. Throughout the day, Ryu had wandered through the familiar swamp of the Fifth Ring, never straying too close to the expedition’s path. His reasoning was pretty simple: the group was loud, slow, and clueless. They might all be experts, but it was that confidence in their abilities that made them such idiots.

Ryu lived in these swamps. He knew the ins and out, knew the ways to avoid disease, knew the animals and vegetation. The others didn’t. The Wilds of the Fifth Ring could be split into three parts: the swamps, the mountains, and the plains. It was as if the three different landscapes had been smashed together, and in the middle of them all was Haven. The “expert'' adventurers of the group had predominantly spent the past five years in the mountains, the relative goldmine of the three biomes.

Now, he had to decide if he was going to sleep in the camp. On the surface, it seemed like an easy decision, but looking at things on the surface had never been Ryu’s way. A night in the swamp meant many things, chief among them being the need to have one eye open. He was used to it, of course. It was that experience, however, that drove him back to the camp. Diving back into the paranoid, wild mentality needed to live alone in the Wilds would make things… difficult.

“Halt and identify yourself!” a woman in scarlet robes called to him, the red jewel on the top of her staff shining brightly in his eyes. He blinked under the harsh light. Two scouts stood on either side of him, their weapons drawn. All because he’d tried to walk back to camp. The taste of a bad decision soured his mood. His head pounded.

“My name,” he said, using his Skill [Whisper Step] to cover the distance between the two in the blink of an eye, “is Ryu. Ishida Ryu.” His hatchet lopped off the top of her staff. The glowing jewel faded.

He heard the loose of an arrow behind him. It was followed closely by the hurried steps of a charging man. The mage stumbled back, the remains of her staff held like a spear. His body tensed for violence. His headache started to fade. He drew his second hatchet, and-

It all stopped. The arrow and the man lost momentum as if halted by an invisible wall. A voice entered Ryu’s mind. “Always making things difficult, aren’t you? Good thing I’m a-”

“Psychic,” Ryu muttered, his body relaxing the slightest bit. He sheathed his hatchets and walked past the red-robed woman with a flat expression. Her vacant gaze told him Horace was explaining the situation, but at this point, he didn’t care. Life was just one long disappointment.

“You’re welcome,” Horace said from his chair. With a cultivated body, he could walk, even run, but Ryu knew he was perfectly happy with getting around by telekinetically lifting his chair.

“Yup,” Ryu grunted, walking past him.

“Bad mood?” the man said. His chair continued to hover beside Ryu.

“Aren’t you the Psychic?”

“Take that as a yes, then. I’m going to assume you don’t have lodgings, so-”

“Got a tent,” Ryu said, running a tongue over his gums. When had he bit his lip?

“A scrap of wool suspended over a stick isn’t lodgings, Ryu,” Horace said in an amused tone.

“Worked so far.”

“Fine, fine. I can take a hint. If you need me though, I’m in the gray tent over there.” He pointed at the ‘tent.’ It was a tent in the same way a castle was a house. Then again, most of the other tents around them were the same. The few that were small most likely had spatial enchantments that made them larger on the inside.

Horace’s chair branched off towards the huge tent, leaving Ryu alone. Truth was that Ryu did wish he had a big, fancy tent to stay in. They were just too rare and too expensive. He looked at his friend’s chair for a moment in hesitation and then shook his head. Ryu’d slept in worse conditions more often than not.

He set up his tent on the fringe of the ordered rows of the other tents. Looking at it now, Ryu realized Horace hadn’t been far off. It was a small thing, little more than a good length of tough fabric held in an arch by the metal skeleton under it. At least, his bedroll would protect him from the damp ground. He sighed. Sometimes you had to be happy with what you had. Comparison was a game in which a man would always find a way to lose.

“Ryu, you’re not sleeping like this,” a voice said from behind him. He winced. That bastard. He’d known Horace had given up too easy. The Psychic always had a plan.

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Ryu said, turning to face Bonny.

The redhead looked at him like he was an idiot. “But you have other choices, now.”

“Do I?” he said.

“Horace told me he offered you a place in his tent.”

“I don’t want your pity,” Ryu grunted.

“No, I suppose you have more than enough of that for yourself,” she said.

“Something like that.” He turned back to his tent.

“Fine,” she said in a softer tone, grabbing his arm. “Since you’re clearly sending me a cry for help, I guess I would let you stay with me.”

Ryu could say no to a lot of things. Something told him that wouldn’t work here.