The adventurers set up the campsite with expert effectiveness. The unlikely heroes settled themselves around the campfire. They shared a simple meal, but it was the first that these adventures would share under their united goal. Jeremy had caught a few plum-looking rabbits when he was hiking and had set to work preparing them. Jeremy prepared dinner over a glowing bed of embers. The ranger passed the beautifully cooked rabbit to Rebecca with a smile and a loving thank you.

"You know, nothing says survivalist like a freshly cleaned rabbit cooked rabbit over a nice pine campfire," Ulrok stated.

Kalven whispered, "Rabbits are more plentiful across the northern waste than Cain." Rebecca did a simple dry rub of salt and pepper over the rabbit she had brought from the tavern. Drovic was beyond the seven heavens from the smell wafting off of the rabbits that slowly rotated on the spit Ulrok had made with a bit of whittling.

"It comes down to field dressing and preparing the rabbit for cooking over a fire. I had spent many a night alone in these woods, and a good meal fills the spirits. I am happy to share my tips," the others could see the loneliness in Jeremy's voice.

"It helps to have a good crossfire, my boy," The Storyteller started to explain. "The best campfire design allows for the best heat. Such as making a cross-shaped fire and stacking your kindling in a matching criss-cross pattern, followed by some nice dried firewood. This method will help the spit work at full effectiveness."

"Lookie here guys, the Storyteller even has campfire stories," Drovic poked fun at the older man. The others enjoyed the laugh, allowing them to forget some of the stress they were facing.

They all seemed to share a feeling of a family preparing for the evening meal, with smiles on their faces.

Away from the village, Jeremy seemed to be coming into his own. He smiled at Rebecca and then gave her a wink, in a not-so-subtle whisper, "Do you remember our first camping trip?"

Rebecca giggled, "Oh, not that old story, you simple little boy?"

Jeremy seemed to have finished his rabbit in a matter of moments. Ulrok laughed to himself, "boy eats like a half-starved wolf. That rabbit was going in what, two bites?" Jeremy jumped to his feet with the grace of a deer. He climbs to the top of the log behind the dwarf, placing his hands on his hips and serving the group surrounding the campfire.

The Storyteller, with his back against a tree and his eyes, closed, "Oh do tell boy, it sounds like you want to do my job. Go on, if you are going to tell a story, do it with some enthusiasm, some feeling."

Rebecca rolled her eyes at the way her grandfather spoke. Ulrok chimed in, "I did not think you did any community outings, young master. I thought you kept to yourself after the village's misgivings on you?"

Drovic took a bite of his rabbit and looked puzzled but interested. The sun was setting, and its rays cast them all in the orange of dying starlight. The fire's glow began to warm their hearts along with their fingers. The heroes felt like watching their little world burn might be the only entertainment of the night. They all listened to every word around the fire because they knew this might be their last peaceful moment.

"Jeremy, you will have to tell me by the end of this journey what could a young boy has done to earn the displeasure of those fine, simple folk," Drovic shrugged. Jeremy ignored Drovic's comment for the time being and focused more on Ulrok.

"I am glad you asked my strong Dwarven friend," Jeremy placed his hands on his hip, "I was spying on them because..." At that moment, Rebecca reached up, wrapped her fingers around Jeremy's belt and pulled him flat on his backside.

"He was being a little creeper, creeping up on everyone all the time," as she ruffled Jeremy's hair as he sat in the grass.

"You two remind me of my sister," Kalven whispered longingly, looking into the flames. "She loved the outdoors and loved to play jokes on me." The party fell silent for a moment, letting Kalven reflect on the loss of his twin. "I hope she is at peace now." With that statement, Kalven got up and walked into the brush.

"Kalven, don't." Jeremy began; you could read the emotions on his face. The young ranger wanted to run after the man and tell him that "they would bring justice to this world." So, Jeremy put his feet under himself, investigated the forest, and found Kalven walking deeper into the haunted forest. He wanted to call out to the man, to tell him to come back, but something held his tongue. Jeremy leaving the man to his devil returned to the others.

Ulrok could read the emotions all over the young ranger's face, "Let him go, lad. He is not going anywhere. He will be back; he wants justice more than any of us here. He needs space to live in the memories of his sister. It is hard enough to lose a sibling, let alone a twin. Some lore suggests that they share a soul, a connection as deep as the gods to this earth."

"The gods have no connection to us; we are their tools. The deaths in that village should be enough proof of that," Drovic smiled at the boy as if to help comfort him, "We can only count on ourselves, and that man lost something more profound than I will ever know." He laughed, breaking the stress in the air around them, "Besides, you still have to finish the story you started."

Ulrok lovingly smacked Jeremy on the back. "Here, here," a smile came back on everyone's face.

"Please don't. I don't think I can keep living down the embarrassment," Rebecca groaned.

The Storyteller beamed, "Isn't that the time she fell into the poison ivy, and they had to send her to the healers? We all know that story, lad. What does she have to be embarrassed about?"

"Well, I am sure you don't know why or how she came to be in that poison ivy patch?" Jeremy smiled from ear to ear as if he were a ten-year-old about to eat all his cake himself. "I was sneaking around the camp at night, trying my best not to be seen. I saw Rebecca leave her tent after the campfire was down to nothing but embers."

Rebecca, a usually collected, strong young woman, began to turn red as the rising sun in early fall. "I looked over, and Brad was also leaving his tent. I followed them. I had no idea what was happening at the time, and I was curious. Well, I saw them stop by this old Oak tree, and I thought, why not surprise them? I jumped out and yelled hello. Rebecca screamed, fell back, and rolled down the hill, falling into the poison ivy patch. Brad, not knowing what just happened, yelped and ran back to camp."

"There you go, Grandpa, that is my dirty secret. I was going to try to kiss Brad under that old Oak tree until I was kissed by poison ivy instead. All thanks to this little boy." Giving Jeremy an excellent punch to the arm.

"If anything, you should be thanking that young ranger, who saved you from a big mistake," the Storyteller said with a laugh.

Drovic nudged Ulrok, "Oh, the joys of young love." Ulrok placed his arm over Drovic's shoulders and just laughed deeply.

"I don't think it was funny," Rebecca half-heartedly shrugged it off.

They went on like this for an hour because they shared stories of the old days. Ulrok shared one story about how, when he was a young boy, he stole a case of Rum from his father's pantry and drank it all in one night with a few of his brothers in arms whom he called them. He swore he would never drink again after that night, but that did not last very long because one of his brothers got them a case of elvan wine the next day, and he just had to try it. Kalven returned between the stories, said his goodnight, went to sleep and asked to be woken up when it was his turn to keep watch.

The adventurers once said their goodnights until Drovic and Jeremy took the first night's watch together. The two comrades sat across from each other. They let the fire burn lower than before for a few reasons: to help keep their night vision, the cooking was finished, and they did not want to draw unwanted eyes in the night. The silence between the two of them seemed to last for a golden age until Jeremy broke the silence.

"I only ever grew up in these woods. You probably think a story about poison ivy was simple or pathetic to hear." Jeremy started to play with the embers with a poking stick.

"Boy, if only you knew." Drovic began to shake his head, "if only you knew how much my life would have been different from having been able to enjoy moments like that as a child." A feeling of sadness, a sense of deep, long-lasting sorrow, was layered into Drovic's voice. Jeremy was surprised to hear that emotion from the man who acted like he had it all.

"What do you mean, if only I knew?" Puzzlement was written all over Jeremy's face.

"Growing up in the city I did, you either grew up fast or did not grow up at all, boy. I was not born into any bloodline house. Where I had a servant to wash my backside for me, those stories of knights in shining armour are just that, stories. Like you, I had to fight. All my needs were looked after because of these blades. " He paused, and his eyes seemed to harden as he looked at the young man across from him, "But I think you know some small measure of that, don't you?"

Jeremy nodded, "Yeah after I surprised Brad and Rebecca," Jeremy paid and took a deep breath. "After that night, Brad and his friends surprised me one day on my walk back from the village to my home. They beat me until I could barely walk, I was ten years old, and they were sixteen. I never told anyone. The old maid Anna found me on the side of the road and helped me home and helped me with a few herbs. After that, I did not bother spending time with the other kids, or at least not alone. I spent more time in the woods or stopping in and checking on Anna."

"I am assuming Rebecca doesn't know, does she?" Jeremy just looked away from the fire and Drovic. "Well, it seems, boy, that you and I shared a few things in common, the hardships put on us by others," and to end his point, Drovic flipped his favourite dagger in his left hand, and what seemed like magic, it ended up in his right.

"Can I ask you a question about the city or whatever?"

"Ask away; I will give you one question, whatever you need or are on your mind." Another flip, from right to leave this time. It seemed to Jeremy the dagger was lighter than the air itself.

"What was the worst thing to happen to you when you grew up?" Jeremy was on edge; he did not know what might come. He thought his world was so small compared to this adventure who travelled the world and ended up in his small village.

As Jeremy asked this question, Drovic slipped, dropped the dagger, and looked straight into Jeremy's eyes. "It was when I killed my brother." Drovic bent over, picked up the blade from the grass, and inspected it. The edge seemed to dance in the glow of the embers.

"You, what!" Jeremy shouted and then slapped his hands over his mouth, not wanting to wake the others.

"You heard me," Drovics' tone was short and sharp. "I had to kill my brother. It was him or me. I was in my young adult years in life. My mother had kicked the two of us to the streets a few years ago, and we had been living on scraps. Stealing whatever we could get our hands on. Fighting whoever we needed or had to." Drovic paused and seemed lost in thought for a moment as if he were back in those early years of his life. "We were all we had. Even the scraps of clothes I had one came from when we stole a pair of shifts from a clothesline in the backyard of some cobbler."

"But what could have forced brother against brother if you were a team, surviving together?" Jeremy was stunned.

"Simple, I wanted to live." His tone shifted again into a matter-of-fact manner.

"Nothing in the world would have caused me to kill my brother if I had one," Jeremy stated with ice coming from his tone.

"Then you would have been dead and forgotten by now, like him. I am here and was able to help save your village because I did what I had to do to survive," Drovic whispered, and Jeremy could swear by the gods that he could see a teardrop down the left side of his face.

Jeremy and his curiosity for the world beyond pushed him to probe deeper into this story. He felt possessed to find the story behind this. "What could have been worth the life of your brother? How could his death save your life?"

There was a long pause, and the adventurers did not move an inch. The sounds of the forest came alive around them. Jeremy could feel the wings of an Owl gracefully fly by above them. Drovic could feel the earthworms digging under his boots. It was as if the two unlikely allies froze in time as the world moved around them.

"Do you love Rebecca," Drovic asked, breaking the frozen moment in time. "Do you love her with every ounce of your soul? Could you go on living without her? Are you connected to her deeper than anything or anyone else? Not just a romantic connection, just a spiritual one as two souls sharing a bond of family or a bond of trauma. Think of Kalven; he loves his sister, and her death ripped his soul apart. Many siblings share this unspoken connection and do not know of it until it is gone. Let me give you an example. Think about two brothers in battle, two warriors. These warriors on the battlefield can feel interweaved, and their bond forged in fire is unknown to anyone outside their shared trauma. Reflect on how you shared the battle with Ulrok and multiplied it by a hundred battles or even a thousand. That was the bond I shared with my brother. We shared a bond forged by battle and by family."

Jeremy listened to every word from Drovic, and his blood began to boil until he snapped, "Why then did you kill him." Drovic too snapped, and a dagger landed between Jeremy's boots, and the young ranger had not even seen the blade leave Drovic's hand.

"Listen, boy, you haven't walked in my boots, and you cannot know the struggles I have been in to get me to this point." Taking a deep breath, counting to ten, he let it out. "I will tell you a tale that no one knows, but you cannot share it with the others."

Jeremy nodded, "I swear."

"As I said, I grew up in the streets. I was nothing more than a rat to those passing by. Merchants kept an eye on my person as I walked the streets. Travellers held closer their coin purses as they walked past us, begging. The guards would beat us for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. However, it was not all pain, my brother and I lived for the challenges of the day and thrived in the crime at night. We would do any job that we could get our hands on. One night we broke into a storehouse and stole a cartload of watermelons. Do you know how hard it is to steal and sell that many watermelons?" Drovic smiled and laughed to himself as he relived the memories.

After a few moments of Drovic living in the past, his tone changed to despair. "That was until we met the Iron Forged Cleric Drewmont, or the Iron Legion depending on which fraction or nation you are in. Anyways. We were begging in the usual spot down by the docks. We saw this beautiful whitewashed 3-masted ship set moorage. I still remember the symbols of protection that lined the edge of the ship, marking it as a holy vehicle of some order, at the time, I did not know. Their main symbol was painted on the centre sails, a red anvil. My brother and I had never seen such a ship. We watched as most of the crew left the ship and entered a few of the local taverns."

"Was that when you devised a plan to steal the ship?" Jeremy asked in excitement.

"At the time, my brother was the one that came up with the plans. Our plan was simple anyway, and we were going to swim up behind the ship, climb up the backside and slip into the captain's quarters and take what we could because we saw that the captain had joined his crew in the tavern at least the person we thought was in charge. Everything went according to plan, but one small part, the head of the ship was not the captain, no, it was the Cleric, and he never left the ship. We were in the middle of looting the room; we found enough gold in one purse to feed us for a year as kings, but we did not leave. We got greedy. We kept looking. Then I found this knife. The one between your boots." Jeremy looked down, and the knife was gone. He looked back up, and the blade was back in Drovic's hand.

"So, Clerics are good people," Drovic put his hand up in response to Jeremy's statement.

"Men of gods are still just men. Then Cleric Drewmont was an evil soul who would not let some street rats steal from him. He cast a command word, fight or die, on my brother and me. My brother fought the compulsion, but I did not. I embraced the command because I did not want to die there. I stabbed my brother in the neck with the dagger you see here. I stabbed him. I stabbed my brother and then pushed the corpse at the Cleric. I did not pause, and I wanted to live. My haste allowed me to live. The Cleric wanted to toy with us, and I refused to be a plaything. Drewmont wanted to see our pain, and I would not give it to him. The foolish Cleric was unprepared for me to act so fast, with such disregard. I used that small window. As soon as I pushed my brother's corpse at the Cleric, I dove out the back window and ran."

"I don't believe you; how do you still have the knife? How did you get away? You are playing with me."

"I am not. I was cursed that day because the gods do not smile at someone who kills their kin, and the protection runes were strong on that ship. That dagger you see is bound to me. It will always return to me. As for getting away, that is a different question and a different story. Let me just say; I saw Drewmont again."

Drovic would not tell Jeremy that his conversation with the Elf Cleric led him to his small town, but it felt good after so many years to avenge his brother.

"I am sorry, Drovic, I am."

"I am too, Jeremy, I am too. Enough, we should be changing watches. The next time, I should tell you the story of Sarah." Drovic got up, brushed off the ash and dirt on his pants and woke the Storyteller that it was his turn to watch. There were a few grumbles by the older man who took his spot at watch along with Rebecca.

******

Sleep was restless for Jeremy after he crawled into the tent after his turn at watch had finished. The nightmares were becoming something more. When they were back in the village, he could not sleep because he kept seeing his dead friends tossed about the streets. His heart was breaking with memories of their laughter replaced with empty, soulless eyes looking back at him. Jeremy had the feeling of being dragged by his ankles. This night's dream was something more. Something dark and haunting.

It began like the others, standing in the street. The boar had just raged across the town, the young ranger was out of arrows, and small rivers of blood were forming paths down the streets. That was when the dream changed. The hissing figure's dark shadow was back and just looked at Jeremy, flashing a bright, burning, purple colour to its eyes and watching him. The eyes seemed to burn into his very heart. The creature raised one hand, and Jeremy felt an icy touch. He awoke with a sharp pain in his chest. Jeremy was covered in sweat.

He nestled back down into his sleeping bag, placed his hands behind his head, and studied the shadows cast on top of the tent. Ulrok was out cold, snoring like normal. He found that the snoring helped settle his racing heart. Kalven was on the other side, curled up in a ball, tears dripping down his face ever so softly. "At least I am not the only one struggling with sleep," he whispered, "hopefully."