Olaf and I set out from Boston, leading a Griid-train to Kansas City.

The destination was of course no accident. I had arranged to take the route so that I could visit Dodge. Balthazar had suggested that I was likely to have Olaf with me for a few journeys until he had levelled enough and gained enough experience to take the trains himself. The city badly needed him to be able to operate his own trains. After the Falling, there was a glut of trade to be done.

The route Jacob had selected added some time to the journey. Our course drifted from the most direct path to allow us to encounter nests of fiends. It wasn't a hugely substantial addition, and the time invested now was expected to pay dividends, helping Olaf level quickly so that he would be more capable of leading Griid-trains on his own.

It was more natural than I had expected. Olaf was a peer, he was my age, he was hardly really newer to the suit than I was. He took to it with a kind of natural ease that I hardly thought could be normal. My Synergy Skill seemed to be affecting him as well. We encountered Bearwolves early in our journey and I stood back while he slaughtered them. I was present to help him, just as the departed Chowwick had been for me. He made quick and easy work of them, his level rising.

The nights were idyllic. Olaf and I would mingle with the merchants and caravan guards, but by and large there was a sense of discomfort. They preferred to keep to themselves, and we passed our evenings with ales and idle talk. I didn't confess to him as I had with Lauren and Katya. He was a Griidlord now. There were things I didn't know if I could tell him. He was honor-bound and oath-bound to the city, not to me. He was a fiercely loyal and honorable man. I didn't know what obligations he might feel if he learned of my intentions to message with Joel, my interactions with the journals of John the Dispeller, my planned rendezvous at the salt flats.

We detoured as well to encounter the rarer fiends that Jacob had prescribed. There I found workouts for myself as well as Olaf. None of the fiends compared to the challenge I had faced with Doom. That had been madness on my part in any event—a stupid, risky plan driven by the pressures of the upcoming Falling. The twisted beasts we met on Jacob's tour of fiends provided challenge enough for Olaf and me to both level together, but we were rarely in a truly threatening scenario.

Don't be fooled by the multitudes we faced. Our journey to Kansas City consisted of more than a thousand miles. Over the course of that incredibly vast and mostly unpopulated extent, we zeroed in on locations that had been long documented and researched by Jacob. Encountering any fiend, especially a rare variety, was a very rare event in the life of a normal human. We were hunting them over the course of many leagues.

On the third day our route to Kansas City veered south so that we could encounter Jacob's Worm. The thing was titanically huge, burrowing under the surface of the earth as easily as a fish might swim through water. It was the first fight on the journey where Olaf and I had to truly act as Sword and Shield. The beast would strike like a raptor, exploding from beneath to tower above us and crash down with the power and weight of its huge form. Olaf's shield deflected the creature, demanding every iota of strength he could leverage, while I used him like a fortification, firing BEAM and delivering opportune CUTs as the moments arrived. The battle took most of the day, and it was simply by attrition that we carved it down—cutting slices from the creature a piece at a time—until eventually it lay choking and dying at our feet, our suits rewarding both of us with level increases.

Circumstances did not allow us the rest we would both have liked to take at the conclusion of the battle. The train awaited, and commerce rested for no man, it seemed. With shaking limbs we gathered our FootFields together and resumed the trail. We had but one scheduled stop left on our path to Kansas. The small salt flats. My heart seemed to hum faster at the prospect of this moment far more than the battles that had preceded it.

As the scenery blurred past us, I couldn't fail to muse on the discord. Olaf and I were both moving with pained, aching bodies that resulted from the days of battle. Our steps were far from smooth, and our pace uneasy. Yet, as we moved so, the gentle hills streaked past us like galloping horses, smoothing and flattening to plains.

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Olaf trudged heavily, his back arched and stiff. "Did you level, Ti, from the Worm?"

I said, "Yeah… that's twice for me now. I just hit thirty-five."

Olaf said, "Seems like a lot of work for two levels."

I smiled crookedly at him. "It slows down as you go. You'll see what I mean. Two levels in three days is very rewarding. I paid for it with my body though. By the Oracle, my leg's a mess. What did you stack on to your status?"

He preened slightly. He'd been enjoying how his levels were coming faster than mine. He'd started the journey at level eleven while I had been thirty-three.

He said, "I'm level eighteen now. Means I've got two more to go until another skill…"

I could see the excitement he had at the prospect. I understood it. I had five more levels to go before acquiring another skill, but the prospect was delirious.

I said, "Maybe you'll get super-duper-healing hands this time."

He frowned, not without amusement. "Not knocking Healing Hands—they've absolutely served a purpose—but it might be nice to get something a little more… offensive."

I said, "I know. Assess has been endlessly useful to me, but when my first Skill didn't really add to my power I was disappointed as well. Magneblade would be dead now if not for Healing Hands."

The plains before us were flat and nearly uniform. A herd of bison moved in the distance, far to the right of our path, like a landform creeping over the surface of the earth. Dust rose in a cloud from their passage, the yellowed grasses disappearing beneath them as they ploughed the ground. Beyond, in the distance, the vague form of a copse of trees and a ruined building peeked from the horizon.

My eyes locked to the stand of trees. The light shimmered in the stretch between us. Olaf saw my attention fixing there. He said, "So… what are you doing here anyway? If there's no fiends to fight, why are we stopping?"

For all the rehearsal I had done to answer this question, I still worried that my lie would show itself. "It's to do with my business. There's a trader from a rival outfit who my agents have convinced to consider switching allegiances. There's some dickering to be done. The guy is nervous of being exposed to his current employer, so we're meeting in secret to protect his identity."

Olaf cast a glance around the empty expanse. "All the way out here… how'd he get out here without a Footfield?"

I smiled, hoping it looked natural. "It's all very confidential, Olaf. Trade secrets and all that, you know."

Olaf rolled his eyes.

I tried not to measure his responses too closely. He seemed to be buying it. I didn't want to upset any of that by seeming too nervous or observant. The truth was that I was nervous. I was vibrating with anxiety for the lies I was telling him, for the encounter that approached.

The train arrested a few miles from the stand of trees. I left them under my own Footfield, blazing across the plain of wilted grass like an arrow. My heart found a higher gear with each closed mile. The small salt plain stretched beyond the trees, its dry, uniform surface shimmering with the distortions of the day's sun.

I relinquished the Field when I was within a few hundred yards of the ruined structure. It might have been a church once, or a mansion. It was far too long crumbled to be easily understood. I paid little enough attention to what the historical motive for the structure's erection might have been. I was consumed enough with my own thrumming heart and my own questionable motives for being here.

I climbed the slight rise to the crumbling walls. The trees grew dense, pushing their way up between piles of clumped masonry, leaning together as though to comfort one another for their precarious position, living as an island of vegetation in the seas of dry grasses and barren flats.

The air was suddenly cooler and moister as I stepped out of the sunlight. The color of the light shifted, taking on the gentle green tinge of leaves above. Beams of brightness pierced the gaps, showing themselves in the particles and moisture that danced in the air of the enclosed space.

The ground was softer underfoot here. The soil showed through, surprisingly yielding, the scent of damp earth lingering. My eyes searched everywhere. I fought to suppress a rising panic. Was I the first to arrive? Would I need to wait? Had the meeting been a failure? Some small part of me hoped that the rendezvous had been aborted—there would be a strange relief. A larger part of me would be devastated.

Then a shadow detached itself from a stretch of intact wall. It stepped out from the envelopment of the shadows and into a beam of light.

Before me, looking strangely shy and nervous herself, stood Racquel.

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