He nodded. The twins were inhaling their breakfast as only young people could.
“They’ll be well,” Yulia assured him.
“I know.” He managed a smile. “But I worry. Are young people always so…fragile?”
“Everyone,” she said. Her voice held the hard-won wisdom of years but it was tempered with a surprising amount of humor. “Stronger than you think and more fragile than you think.” She shrugged. “They’ll find what they need—as, I think, you did.”
He couldn’t argue that. With the return to the real world looming, he felt a strange sense of completion as well as a goodbye to a version of himself he had never expected to leave behind. When he left Yulia’s cottage a few minutes later, it was with a sense of serenity.
Josyla led them through the forest at a quick pace. When he caught up with her, the elf confided, “I’m terrified.”
“What of?” He looked at her as she forged ahead, pale and determined.
“Seeing the people I hurt. Gwyna could never have made them what they are now without me.” She swallowed. “You can say whatever you want about me needing to do it to survive—I told myself all those things over the past few years. It kept me sane. But it was never enough.”
Ben nodded quietly.
“How is Orien?” she asked him. “I…I hope he’s well. I hope he’s…” She couldn’t finish the sentence.
“I don’t think he has moved on,” Ben said, amused. “I assume that was what you were going to say.”
Josyla nodded. A flush stained her cheeks now.
He swallowed. “There is something you should know. Orien was one of a few who began something of a—hmm. Well, you know the provision of elven law that you’re entitled to the life of someone who sold you?”
She looked at him, alarmed. “Yes.”
“He killed Kerill,” he said baldly. Someone else would probably know a better way to say it, but he wasn’t someone else.
The half-elf stopped dead in her tracks and her jaw hung open.
“There’s so much happening in Heffog,” Ben said. “To be fair to Orien, it’s kind of my fault. He did…uh, run with it, though.”
“I…” Josyla stared off into the distance. “Well, I’m certainly less worried about seeing the people I put the rings on, so that’s something. But this is insane. How could… I don’t…”
“You don’t think it was justified?” he asked her curiously.
“Of course it was. Well, slavery is prohibited. Certain types of it.” She shrugged helplessly. “But the rich do what they want. They always have.”
“You don’t want to change that?”
“You can’t change something like that.” She looked at him like he was crazy. “You run. You carve out the safest place you can and you do whatever you can to stay there, but there’s no guarantee. There’s never a guarantee.”
She kept walking and he continued alongside her with a deep frown.
It seemed ridiculous to him that people there would merely accept their slavery without another word, but who was he to judge? How many things in the real world had he run away from because he thought there was no way to change them?
They made good time over the next hour. Jamie and Taigan walked together, not talking, but they didn’t seem entirely separate from one another either. Ben envied that a little—he wasn’t close with any of his family and he’d never even had a friend or girlfriend that close aside from Mike and Natasha—but he mostly took happiness from the fact that the two of them looked relaxed.
They arrived first at a maze and he was surprised to see both the twins hang back. They looked almost worried and watched carefully as Josyla proceeded along the paths to the center of the maze and crouched there.
The elf scratched in the dirt and made a hole that grew deeper and deeper until she found something. Carefully, she levered out a statue in the form of a pillar with three animals twined around each other. She held it in her hands for a moment and spoke a single word over it. He could not hear what the word was but the statue crumbled into dust and disappeared in a rising breeze.
Josyla sat silently for a moment, her head tipped toward the sky, then pushed to her feet and walked quickly out of the maze.
She did not speak while she led them through the undergrowth. As far as Ben could tell, she was not looking at landmarks and seemed to be drawn along an invisible path. When they crested a hill and saw the encampment in front of them, she seemed almost surprised.
The people there looked at them with open fear. They were not as gaunt as the person he had seen in the town, but they did not look well-fed by any stretch of the imagination.
Josyla led the way down the hill with her hands up to show she meant no harm. When she reached the bottom, she said simply, “You remember me.”
“The witch’s slave,” one of the men said. “Did you kill her? Is that why we’re free?”
“She is dead,” the elf confirmed. “And I have come to undo the last of her magic.”
The people looked at one another, almost crying with relief. A few had sat again as they were unsteady on their feet. Taigan and Jamie began to circulate with pieces of dried meat and fruit, which they ate eagerly.
While they did so, Josyla paced.
“I don’t know how to do this,” she confessed. “Gwyna did much of the casting. I simply formed the metal…and I…”
“I saw.” His voice was quiet. The sorceress’ magic had been crueler than he could believe. The rings had spikes on the insides that pierced the people’s fingers to the bone. The wounds had not festered, but he could not imagine the pain of having the rings there.
“I still hear their screams at night,” she confessed. “The hot metal, the— They lived…I kept telling myself that they lived, but I felt it every time one of them died later. Who knows who killed all of them—scared farmers or adventurers. Gwyna made them unable to think of anything but their regrets and hatred and set them loose on the world.”
“She thought she was setting them free,” Ben said, in part to remind himself that it had been real. “I wish—”
“There is no sense wishing,” Josyla said with the finality of someone who had long since learned not to spend her energy on wishing for a different world. She looked at the people and said, “It’s time.”
“You can do this,” he assured her. The words felt awkward but her smile told him he’d said the right thing for once.
The elf set her tools up in the center of the camp. She waited as the people came to her one by one and spoke quiet words over their rings before she cut through the metal, holding a shard of rock near the ring as she did so. Each time, the stone flared with deep blue light and she rocked back on her heels and winced.
“She explained it to me earlier. When a spell is broken,” Jamie explained to Ben, “all the power releases. Spells seem to be made in…circles? So diagrams, but also rings. She cuts the ring, which breaks the spell.”
Josyla might not be a trained sorceress, but she worked quickly and efficiently. As each ring broke, the person sagged with relief. The elf, meanwhile, never wavered from her concentration on the gold.
Her magic truly was extraordinary. She sang under her breath as she worked, and the metal responded to the music. It lifted away from skin, its form suddenly fluid without being white-hot, and spun above the flesh as a shining orb. She offered each sphere to the person she had taken it from. Some took it and others not. Those that went unclaimed, she tucked in a pouch at her waist.
A salve from Yulia went over the broken skin, with bandages over that. Taigan and Jamie did that part, earnest and wincing every time someone cried out in pain. Ben, watching, thought the girl had an especially careful touch. She wasn’t always gentle—sometimes there were pieces of dirt for her to strip away—but when she had to do something painful, she moved decisively and with precision.
He wondered if she might be a doctor one day. Then he wondered if she had ever had any ambitions in that direction at
all. Probably not. How could someone have ambitions when they did not know if they would live or not or couldn’t even be sure whether they would be awake or not?
“She’ll be all right, won’t she?” he asked Prima.
“Which one?”
“Taigan. Or Josyla, I guess.”
“Do you mean, will Taigan recover from her illness? If so…” Prima paused. “I don’t know if she will ever be cured, but I think she is learning how to wake up again. If not, I will keep her safe when she is here.”
He opened his mouth, then shut it.
“What?”
“I wondered if you knew how medical care worked in our world.” Ben considered the dizzying cost and decided not to say anything to the AI about that. He didn’t want her to feel guilty for existing. “Never mind.”
“Mmmm.”
He turned his attention to the former monsters. At first, he wasn’t sure what he saw, but by the fifth or sixth person, he was certain.
Josyla was becoming more…her. She seemed to sit taller and fill out her edges more completely. There was a healthier color to her cheeks. Her eyes, which had been dark-brown, sparkled with highlights of gold and green. Her hair gleamed slightly. Whatever piece of her had been trapped within each spell was returning as she broke them.
It wasn’t only her, though. The people she was healing also seemed to be healthier. Nothing could take away the months of pain and illness they had endured, but they looked less defeated. Of course, for all he knew, that was simply the relief of not having a piece of metal welded to them.
When the half- elf had finished, she went to each person to say goodbye. A few did not want to speak to her, but others were checking on her as much as she was checking on them. One woman stroked her cheek and said something kind under her breath. Ben marked the way Josyla smiled. Another man said something hurtful, but she nodded and bowed deeply, a gesture of apology that transcended race.
When she returned to the others, she was quiet. They left in silence and he and the twins exchanged a look that said they would let Josyla speak first.
It was a long time before she did. While it was difficult to tell what was going on as they walked through the forest, it seemed clear that the sun was sinking in the sky. Josyla, who had pushed them almost to a jog on their journey into the woods, now walked slowly and sometimes, stopped entirely before she remembered where she was.
“I’m not sure I’m ready to see Orien,” she said finally.
Ben saw the twins’ uncertainty out of the corner of his eye.
“You don’t have to see him,” he said. “But…tell him you’re alive. Tell him you’re well.”
The elf looked soberly at him and nodded.
“Why don’t you want to see him?” he asked.
“So much has happened,” Josyla said. “I’m not sure I’m ready to pick up where we left off. I’m not sure I ever want to see that place again. And if he’s a revolutionary now, if he’s overthrowing the nobles—I don’t know that I want any part of that. I never wanted to stay in Heffog. I feel that if I go back, I’ll never get out again.”
He nodded because he couldn’t fault her for any of that.
“Thank you for not trying to talk me out of it,” she said with a half-smile.
“I wouldn’t,” he told her. “I know what it is to not want to stay in one place.”
“Where were you born?” she asked him, curious now.
“A sleepy little place.” It was difficult to explain his suburban neighborhood to a person from this world. “There were farms nearby, but my parents…well, my mother taught children. My father kept the books for a local blacksmith.”
“You didn’t want his trade?” Josyla guessed.
Ben hid a smile. “No. I didn’t. I went adventuring as soon as I could. I appreciate what they built, now—the life for us, the possibilities, and making sure we were educated. But I’ve always wanted something more for myself. No. Something different.”
“So you understand,” she said. She stopped and looked around. “I’ll get word to Orien,” she promised them. “All of you—thank you. You two, I smelled the maze on you the first time we met. You released that spell. You did more than you know with that. Ben…you came to save me when you didn’t even know who I was.” She exhaled a deep breath. “Tell Yulia thank you for me.”
“Where are you going?” Ben asked.
But she was already fading away, melting into the dappled sunlight as she wove through the trees. Whatever magic she had, it went far beyond metals and music.
And the forest protected her as one of its own.
Ben watched her go, then turned to the twins. “Very well. Where to next? I’ll see you there before I leave the game.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Anything?” Ben called over the gorge.
“Nothing here,” Taigan responded. “Jamie?”
“Sec.” The boy’s voice was strained, and he appeared a moment later in a rustle of leaves. He heaved himself over a branch and stood to look around. “Aha! I see it!”
His companions looked in the direction in which he pointed and both started running.
“Hey!” Jamie called. “I found it! I should get to be there first!”
“Nope!” his sister retorted. She hurdled a small bush and started down the slope.
Ben didn’t have a slope on his side, so he hurled himself off the tiny cliff with a yell—only to realize that he plunged toward a patch of watery mud. He wind-milled his arms wildly, but there was no avoiding it and he landed with a squelch.
“Aww,” Taigan called over her shoulder as she sprinted away. “Too bad!”
“God—dammit—fucking—mud…” He yanked his leg and only succeeded in pulling it out of his boot and tipping it with a thump. “Gah.”
“I hope it all works out for you!” Jamie called as he sprinted past at high speed.
“You two,” he shouted at them, “are very disloyal!”
“It sounds like something a loser would say,” the girl observed.
He yanked his boot out of the mud with a wet splotch and set off in one boot and one sock to enter the campground with a narrow-eyed look. “That win was invalid.”
“It was,” Jamie agreed. “Both of you had a false start, which means I win.”
“No, no.” His sister wagged her finger. “I won fair and square. Prima?”
“I won’t weigh in on this.”
“That is probably wise,” Ben said. “Now, what do we have?”
“A traditional send-off party,” Prima said. “When someone leaves the game, I like to make sure they have an excellent night. After all the camping and the monsters, it seems like the right thing to do.”
She had laid out a campground that was like something out of a dream. Three spacious tents were strung with fairy lights and flower garlands and each person’s initials were embroidered in gold thread on the tent flap. When he pushed into his tent, he saw a wide, soft bed and a big bathtub filled with steaming water—something that sounded about perfect after his latest round of fights and sleeping on the ground.
Whether the other two took baths or napped, he didn’t know. He only knew he lazed in the bath without it getting cold, a frosty bottle of beer in one hand and not a thought in his mind. His muscles began to relax, the bruises dissipated slowly, and he felt a calm overtake him.
“This is nice,” he told Prima.
“Wait until you see the food.”
“I can’t wait.” He took a sip of beer. “No, I can wait. Mostly because I’m too lazy to get up.”
“Why do you insult yourself? You know I wanted to do that.”
Ben laughed. “Anyway, this is a good send-off. A little time to be quiet and think.” He waited. “What, no jab about my thinking speed?”
“I was trying to be nice because it was a party.”
He chuckled.
The only thing that got him out of the bathtub was the smell of hotdogs cooking. He wandered out, dresse
d in a supremely soft set of pajama pants and a t-shirt—his traditional camping pajamas—to find a camping feast laid out. Hot dogs sizzled, potatoes cooked among the stones in the fire, and the fixings for s’mores were ready.
“Amazing,” he said. “It’s been a while since I had a real camp meal.”
“And,” Prima told him, “you get to have all the fixings.”
“You know, I say that part of the fun is making do with what you can haul up a mountain unrefrigerated, but a baked potato with all the fixings is divine.” He pulled one out and split it before he loaded it with butter, cheese, bacon bits, and more.
Jamie emerged from his tent first and sniffed at the smell of dinner. He loaded five hotdogs onto his plate, dressed each one carefully, and proceeded to scarf them so quickly that Ben put his fork down and watched in amazement.
The boy sighed happily. “That was good. A good starter.”
“Ah, youth.” He smiled and returned to his potato.
“What’s it like being old?” Jamie asked curiously. He froze. “I mean, old..er. Older. Than you were when you were, you know…younger.”
“Uh-huh.” He grinned and watched the kid dig himself into a hole. “Well, I’ll tell you, it’s a full-time job keeping my hair dyed and it’s a miracle I can walk unassisted.”
Jamie lowered his face into his hands with an embarrassed mutter.
“Oh, God,” Taigan said as she stepped out of her tent. “Jamie, what did you do?”
“He put…” Ben mimed. “His whole foot, right—the whole foot—in his mouth.”
She snorted and started her plate but looked around with a frown. In the next moment, she flickered out of existence before she returned with a bowl of some type of grain salad.
“What did you do?” he asked.
“Oh, I can…I don’t know. There’s a way I can summon things, but I can’t be in this version of the world to do it.” She shrugged and ladled a big helping of the salad onto her plate. “Do you want some? Couscous, dried cranberries, feta, spinach…”
He took the bowl happily and served himself before passing it to Jamie. “To answer your question,” he said, “it feels very normal to be older, honestly. The main thing is, you’re more patient—”
Grasping The Future Page 17