Allana sighed into her glass and surveyed the taproom. With Keystone still recovering from the fight, its citizens shell-shocked from the plague and the fetter they had been unwittingly dosed with, the five adventurers were alone, without even an innkeeper or bartender. They had simply been serving themself.

Tenebres sat by the fire, a glass of wine held idly in his hand. His eyes were shut, his lips pursed. Periodically, he reached up with his free hand to rub at his chest through his shirt. Allana recognized the gesture as an indication that his brand was bothering him. Her oldest friend had been sullen and more introspective than usual ever since Kenton had returned to Elliven.

Caden sat not far away, occasionally sipping at a soft cider while he rapidly sketched something onto a sheaf of parchment. Allana had tried to look at the sheets multiple times, but couldn't make out any details, seeing little more than a complex series of interconnected lines. Every hour or so, Caden would grumble in dissatisfaction and ball the top sheet up, throwing it into the fire and starting over.

Oli sat a little farther away, constantly looking between the other two. She clearly had something on her mind, but the tea she was drinking wasn't giving her the courage to break the tense silence, which only let it grow thicker and deeper with each passing moment.

Adeline sat farther away from the rest of the group, eating her stew slowly and methodically, her eyes unfocused and her mind a thousand miles away. Ever since their talk with the Mendicant days before, the knight-gallant had been pushing herself obsessively, spending every day out searching for monsters to hunt. Best as Allana could tell, she was sleeping less than a handful of hours each night, and the pace was beginning to take its toll even on the normally irrepressible knight.

Allana blew out another breath and stood up, moving across the empty taproom. No one gave her a second look, too caught up in their own thoughts to even notice her movement. She stopped at one of the room's two windows, sipping her whiskey and looking out at the falling snow. The first storm of winter had arrived, forcing Adeline inside for the evening while Tobias used his teleportation powers to move between the outskirt villages.

The snow storm meant that not only would there likely be a fresh spawn of frost monsters come morning, but that the adventurers were now officially isolated. While they hadn't expected any more help before winter broke, the first snow ensured that no one would be travelling along the roads from Correntry or Westerlen.

It was the thought of spending an entire winter stewing in the oppressive atmosphere of her friends' angst, watching their fears and anxieties feed on each other and multiply, that finally pushed Allana over the edge.

"Alright, that's enough." Her voice broke the silence like a stone slamming through the surface of a frozen pond, and four sets of eyes shot to her at once, all showing some level of surprise. Allana turned to face the group, her glass held at an angle in one hand while she crossed her arms.

"I've put up with all of you being sullen and scared for almost a whole week, and I'm done with it. At this rate, I'm gonna walk out into a blizzard and freeze to death rather than stay in this terrible room." Olivia smiled briefly at Allana's words, but she saw the irritation and even anger that flickered through everyone else's faces. She didn't care, and didn't wait for them to respond, just bulling forward.

"Yeah, okay, we learned a lot of scary stuff. Yeah, it turns out Caden and Tenebres aren't just special, they're super extra special. And yeah, this whole coven nonsense we've been dealing with might just end up being the opening act to whatever comes next. Well guess what–it's time for all of us to get over it."

Tenebres rolled his eyes, while Adeline's narrowed into a glare. Worse, Caden just turned back to his papers, as if it wasn't even worth responding to her.

Allana gave Olivia a beseeching look, and the girl nodded, looking around at the rest of them. "She's right," the squire said. "I know we got a lot of information forced on us all at once, but we can't just let it do this to us. It's not helping anyone."

"That's easy for you to say," Tenebres finally said. "You're not the ones who found out that the entire Realm will eventually be resting on your shoulders."

"Are you sure about that?" Allana snapped at the boy. "I don't know if you noticed, but the rest of us were there for a reason. We're part of this too–even if we don't pick up one of your fancy special gifts at Initiate, we're all clued in on the biggest secret in the Realm. We don't just get to walk away either, especially when it would mean abandoning our friends."

Tenebres looked back to the fire with a shrug, but Allana had known the little mage long enough to recognize the shame on his face.

"You don't get it," Caden said. His voice was unexpectedly sour, almost resigned, in a way none of the others had ever heard from the celestial before. "It's not this mythic gift crap I care about. It's everything else, everything that got us here."

"Storyteller?" Adeline asked, her own words little more than a monotone.

Caden gave the knight a surprised look, but nodded.

"Cool, want to fill the rest of us in on what's going on then?" Allana asked the pair.

Caden rolled his eyes. "None of us are here by chance, Allana, any more than we are by choice. We all got pushed here by Storyteller."

The rogue arched an eyebrow at Olivia, who gave her a blank look, shaking her head. "How's that?" Allana asked, turning back to Caden. "I've never met this guy before in my life, and you think I'm only here because of him?"

"Yes!" Caden snapped at her. "He played all of us to get us here. He sent Adeline to Elliven to intercede in Oli's duel and take her as a squire. He came to my village and saved my life, then gave me the tools and encouragement to leave home–so he could just drop me once he knew I was in the right place to meet Oli. Then he gave your friend the letter that sent you to Culles to meet us, and made sure Adeline would show up in time to save us from Hellesa. He moved all of us like pieces on an Elder-damned game board, and now we know why! Because he expects us to be ready to clean up the next mess!"

By the end of his speech, Caden was standing, hands clenched at his side, shoulders heaving with his anger. "He sent us here to hone us, and when the fire proved too hot, he sent Tobias to bail us out! I wouldn't even be surprised if he sent the Mendicant here too, to tell us all of this!"

The room returned to silence in the aftermath of Caden's tirade, the only sound the crackling of the fire–and then Allana started laughing. She just couldn't help it anymore. She laughed, and she laughed, until the anger had drained out of Caden, leaving him on his feet, watching her uncertainly.

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Only then did Allana respond, mirth still bubbling in her words. "That is what you're freaking out about? Because some extra-special adventurer made sure we'd all meet each other?" His face baffled, Caden nodded, and Allana barked another laugh at his face. "I hate to be the one to break this to you, Caden, but that's not news! Everything I am is because of people trying to control me! I spent years letting it fuck me up too, and you know what? I got over it!

"I can fight, and run, and steal, because of Telik. I hate the man, and I promise you that I'm happy I killed him, but if it wasn't for him, I'd probably be dead in some alley by now. Geoffrey trained me to be an assassin–but he also put me on the road to become an adventurer. He let me start to grow, to become a person. So yeah, maybe I wouldn't be here without some letter from some guy I've never met–but so what? I wouldn't be here without a thousand different people doing a thousand different things! That doesn't make any of my choices any less meaningful!"

Caden's eyes went wide as Allana spoke, and the rogue could tell that he had never considered any of the things Allana was saying. He had been so wrapped up in the idea of someone else shaping his path that he had never considered that everyone had others shaping their own roads.

"Allana's right," Oli said. "My father was an abusive, selfish ass–but without him, I might not have been so resistant to the nobility. I might not have been pushed to accept Adeline's offer. And if not for Rose and Beryl, I wouldn't have been ready to trust or befriend any of you."

Caden gave the former noble a surprised look until Adeline finally spoke again, drawing everyone's eyes to her. "Choices are everything," the knight-gallant said. "It's part of how we do things as adventurers. Storyteller asked me to keep an eye on the next round of trial duels last year, but that was it. He didn't tell me to watch out for Olivia specifically, or to offer her a position within the Order. I made that choice–and then I made sure to give you as many choices as I could, too."

"I remember that," Oli acknowledged. "You offered to help me become a sentinel instead."

"The letter we got was the same way," Tenebres recalled, speaking up for the first time in a while. "The one from Sebastian, or Storyteller, or whoever. It didn't tell us we needed to go to Culles, it just gave us a lead, for if we chose to continue what we were doing with Geoffrey. We could've just as easily stayed in Emeston, or gone off on our own."

Allana nodded, remembering the same thing. "So?" she asked, looking back to Caden. "Are you going to say Storyteller never gave you any choices? That he just pushed you onto this path without any other options?"

The celestial frowned, but after a moment, they reluctantly nodded. "He knew I wanted to leave Felisen. He gave me choices, sure, but they all involved staying in the general area, at most. He certainly didn't tell me that if I accepted his gift, I might be responsible for saving the entire Realm!"

"You had to know it was something important, though," Adeline pointed out. "A special, unique gift, granted by this mysterious man. You couldn't have thought that it was the ticket to a life of peace and quiet."

Caden flushed a little, but acknowledged the point. "I guess not."

"At least you got a choice," Tenebres muttered.

Allana rolled her eyes. "Okay, I'm gonna share a lesson I learned before I turned ten, because apparently the rest of you somehow have yet to learn it." She looked around, meeting each of her friends' eyes, before continuing. "Life sucks. It's unfair a lot of the time. Get. Over. It."

Tenebres chuckled dryly, shaking his head, while Caden just blanched at Allana. "Seriously? Get over it?"

"You wanted these answers, Caden," Allana reminded him. "You went out of your way to get information your mentor didn't want to share with you, information you could only get from the most powerful gifted any of us have ever met. Did you think it was going to be good news? Did you ever even consider that maybe Storyteller didn't tell you any of this because he knew it would send you into some angst-driven spiral like this?

"And you!" Allana whirled around and pointed a finger at Tenebres. "Since the day I actually met you, you've been talking about wanting to find out more about your gift. Well congrats! You did it! And it turns out, to everyone's shock and surprise, your gift that summons murderous demons comes from a pretty bad place! Well guess what–you just got tapped to be a hero one day too, just like Caden, regardless of where your gift came from!

"These are your lives now–all of our lives, in fact, since Oli and Adeline and I aren't going anywhere either! But sitting around pouting about how unfair all of it is isn't going to change any of it! We've got a bunch of people that need our help, then we've got four more hags to hunt down, and guess what? We were going to do all of that anyway! Just like we were going to intervene in whatever the next mess is too! You know why?"

Allana looked around the group. She knew her eyes were a little wild, but that didn't matter. She saw the pleased look on Oli's face, the glitter in Tenebres's eyes, the smile forcing its way onto Caden's lips.

Allana nodded, smiling wider with each word. "Because we're Noble-damned adventurers!"

"Woo!" Adeline cheered, leaping to her feet with a little bit of applause. The blonde knight smiled broadly, the way she hadn't in days, and she clapped Adeline on the shoulder. "Now that was a speech!"

Allana blew out a long breath, noticing that she was a little winded for some reason. "Fuck me, motivational speeches really take it out of me."

"Well, hopefully you won't need to make another for a while," Olivia observed with a grin.

"Yeah, yeah," Caden rolled his eyes, but it felt good to see the celestial reclaim some measure of their usual energy.

Tenebres chuckled a little, and finally stood up from his seat. "Feels like it's probably a good time to share a round."

"Woo!" Adeline and Allana cheered together, while Caden and Olivia signalled more reserved acceptance of the offer.

The boy made his way to the unmanned bar while the rest of the group pulled some tables and chairs together in front of the fire, the noxious silence forgotten in the wake of Allana's speech, and in the flurry of activity, it hit Allana just what she had done.

If she had been told a year before that she'd one day make a rousing, if somewhat rude, speech to cheer up a bunch of people she hadn't even met yet, she would've laughed herself silly. The Allana of a year ago had been a stubborn loner, capable of going days at a time without speaking to anyone, and she had liked it that way. After a lifetime of pain, it had been easier, safer, to be on her own.

Geoffrey and Tenebres had started to change that, but it had only been after meeting Caden and Oli, and even Adeline, that Allana had started to truly shake free of those instincts ingrained into her by years struggling on the streets of Emeston. She just hadn't realized how far she had come, until she saw her newfound friends behaving so much more like she once had.

Tenebres soon returned to the assembled table, his dexterous fingers managing to hold five shot glasses upright without tipping them, and the five friends each took a glass.

"To Allana!" Olivia said, meeting her eyes with a boldness uncommon to the oft reserved squire.

"To adventuring!" Allana suggested instead, trying to deflect the praise.

"To the road that got us here," Caden said.

"And the one yet to come," Tenebres added.

"Just drink already!" Adeline jeered.

All five laughed, throwing back the shots. Allana savored the pleasant burn and the lingering sweetness of the alcohol–she hadn't seen what it was Tenebres had poured, but she'd have to ask him.

The adventurers put their glasses down, and for the first time since the Mendicant's ominous revelations, they passed the night in friendly, happy chatter.

Let the future bring what it might, Allana decided, looking out the window to the storm raging outside, frosting the glass white. We'll face it together.

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