After sharing our concerns over breakfast, we'd moved on to the future we couldn't ignore. Plans had been built during the night, and revelations had a funny way of shaking them loose with the light of day. Each of us had found our priorities changed in some manner, and not all in similar directions.

The fact of the duke's plan – to uncover and plumb the depths of an ancient Ashkanian ruin using the divinely gifted linguistic powers of God-Touched individuals – had changed things for Vera. I may have dubbed her a 'failed revolutionary' but she still kept a strong connection to her homeland, and hearing that Duke Ryonic was about to cement his grip on power for generations was something she couldn't quite countenance.

Nathlan had – rather bravely, I thought – asked her how things would be different a second time, and why she hadn't returned before now. Her answer had surprised me. She hadn't given up on the Marchlands, but the costs of intervening again had proved itself too high for her tastes, hence why she fled. The duke was a pragmatic man, but he had no problem killing a few villages outright if it would allow him to keep control of the province as a whole. Vera might be able to win a bloody guerrilla war, with help, but that would fundamentally ruin the lives of the Marchlanders.

The price of freedom was simply too high. And the duke's new plan hadn't changed that at all, but it had made the cost of non-intervention rise considerably, too. The Marchlanders could be ruled by the duke for a generation. They could endure, as the downtrodden have done for centuries, in the hope of a brighter tomorrow for their children, but if the duke did raid an Ashkanian civilisation vault, then he would wield power personally for several generations at the least, and set up his descendants for many more to come.

The price of freedom was as high as ever, but it was as nothing to the price of inaction, at least according to Vera, anyway. It was obvious then in which direction her desires led.

Jorge had a different problem. His faith had been shaken. I didn't understand the full extent of it, but it was clear that he had thought of the World Tree as some natural calamity that operated without reason. A check on power without conscious control. More a mechanism or reaction than a true mind.

It was hard to keep such a view after meeting a child of the Great Tree and witnessing first hand the way it acted. Either it was truly acting on a whim, as I suspected, or it had some grand plan, of which its intervention on my behalf was simply a small part of. Jorge was likely clinging to that hope, but I didn't think that any more of a comfort for him. Sure, perhaps it was better that the mythical phenomena he had dedicated his life to were thinking and planning and manipulating events to suit their needs rather than just acting for the fun of it… But it still left the question of how and why they chose to intervene in events.

That was the key question for anyone of faith, and while I wished him well with it, I had no advice to share and no way to help. We could search for answers, but I had no idea how to find more of the Subakir, even if I considered that a good idea, which I wasn't sure I did. So Jorge had some heavy things to think about and work through, and I wasn't sure exactly where they dragged him.

Nathlan was simple, at least. He wanted to get stronger. I still didn't understand his true motivations for being out here – he'd shared little enough of his past, after all – but I remembered our conversation above the Iona Chasm all those weeks ago. 'Tsanderos demands power' or something, and he fully intended to seize it. Where that would take him, I wasn't quite sure yet, but I suspected that such a broad goal could be accomplished anywhere on this strange and magical continent.

And that just left me. What did I want? How did I feel? Well… Pretty beat up, right now. My ribs had healed as well as could be expected in a day and a half, which was to say that they still hurt like a motherfucker every time I moved wrong, and the bruising was turning from a healthy purple to black with a very unhealthy yellow tinge around the edges.

Physically, I wasn't at my best. Psychologically though? I also wasn't at my best. I had been caged for only a few days, but that was enough to keep me jittery. I couldn't stop looking over my shoulder when I was alone. I didn't remember the actual kidnapping in great detail, likely due to the heavy blow to the head I'd received, but that just made it worse. I remembered the carefree attitude I'd had, not feeling the need to check every corner and not being suspicious of every stranger or shadow. And that had cost me.

Now, especially when combined with the incident in Colchet itself with The Sigil, I found paranoia and suspicion to almost bring me comfort. At least if I was on my guard, I couldn't be taken by surprise, no matter how exhausting it became. Jorge had seen it quickly and pulled me aside for a chat. Much like the Iona Chasm, he had spent time soothing my anxiety before building a plan. Unfortunately, the plan was simply to keep training and give it time. Some things had to be experienced to be known, and safety was one of them, apparently.

To solve that burgeoning paranoia, I only had to get stronger and stay with my companions, which sounded good to me. I could fit with any plans they had yet to make. But there was something else, something tickling at the back of my mind, like a fly pressing on a spider's web. The faint vibration to let me know that not everything was as it should be, that something else demanded attention.

My memories.

I wanted them back. Gods, I wanted them. They were mine, stolen from me by what I'd first thought an uncaring god, and now suspected to be the system itself. Whether they were mine in the sense that I was the same person that had lost them was debatable, but now I knew that they were mine by ownership still. I hadn't given them away. They didn't reside with another, ensconced in some mental cage. I carried them with me, trapped beyond my conscious reach but still there, hiding away somewhere in my brain. I only needed to find them.

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Jorge had warned me not to make recovering my memories a purpose in and of itself, and I understood his point. But I'd felt something in that cavern beneath the earth. Was there not a way to balance the desire for my past without turning my back on my future? Or could I flip that around? I would do my best to find a future here, but I wouldn't turn my back on the past, either.

When we reconvened, it didn't take long to agree on a plan.

"I'm going to the Sunsets," Vera declared. "None of you need to follow, though I'd appreciate your help all the same. Duke Ryonic is a bastard, but I could live with a bastard squatting atop my homeland for a few decades. I can't abide it for a century or more. He needs to die, and I'm the one to kill him."

Honestly, that was when the decision was truly made, but she gave each of us time to answer in our own way.

"Lass, you know I'll be there with you," Jorge said with a small smile. "I gave you my word, long ago, and it seems now's the time. Nathlan and Lamb, I don't want–"

"I will come too," Nathlan interrupted. "I still have much to learn from you both. Besides, I understand what it is to leave your home with unfinished business. It would be hypocritical of me to refuse."

And that just left me. Three sets of eyes turned my way. Vera's were flinty with resolution, but I knew she wouldn't judge me for walking away. Jorge's were filled with compassion and understanding, though there was an interest there, often buried deep but this time a little closer to the surface, that I couldn't ignore. Nathlan's were expectant, waiting for my answer with a strange intensity.

"Where the fuck else would I go?" I asked with a sigh. "Fine, I'll help, too. Can't break up this merry band of misfits, can I? Especially after you run across half a country to rescue me."

"But you didn't need rescuing, did you, lad? You would have stumbled your way out of that cavern without our intervention."

"Well… It was nice to be met with a hot meal, at least," I said with a cheeky grin. That got a few laughs.

"I'll come, Vera. I want to know more, though. None of this stoic hidden past nonsense, now. If we're fighting and maybe dying for your cause, I want to know everything about it. What we're walking into, what we can expect, what our plan is..."

The big woman nodded, struggling to form words through the lump in her throat, and Jorge jumped in in her place.

"Right! Well, that settles it. The first step is crossing the Dragon-Spines, and that's a hell-cooked journey by itself. We'll need specific tools and supplies, and you two need some experience in the mountains proper. I wouldn't take anyone below the 2nd tier into the true mountains."

The instructions came thick and fast as Jorge started rattling off our next steps. "I want you both training with new intensity. You'll need to hit level 50 before we can head to the peaks, but that gives us a few weeks, at least. The duke hasn't yet found a suitable God-Touched, hence why he's still looking, so that gives us some time, right Vera?"

At her nod, he turned back to us. "So, we have some priorities. I need you both at least in the 2nd tier, and I need to be confident you can both hold your own. We need supplies and materials, some new allies, but most importantly, I need you strong. Luckily, I know a place that can give us the first two and test the last. We're heading to the Titan's Crown."

There was a brief pause, where we looked expectantly at Jorge, and he looked right back at us the same way. Eventually, Nathlan relented.

"What is the Titan's–"

"I'm glad you asked!" Jorge cheerfully interrupted. "It's a meeting point."

"Who–"

"Don't you worry, young lads. You'll see soon enough. Just know that it will be a real test of your strength, so I'd spend the next few weeks training like the nine hells if I were you."

I caught Nathlan's look, and we shared an eye roll. The old bastard liked to be mysterious and annoying sometimes, but there was no budging him when the mood came upon him. Better to roll with it and hope he'd open up later once he'd stopped having fun.

Still, I couldn't deny that it was good to have direction again. I might do some of my best work when plans are a distant memory and improving is the name of the game, but there was something undeniably comforting in just trusting my companions to have a plan. 'There's freedom in following', as the saying goes.

We spent a little longer than normal packing up the camp after that, and then we turned our sights upwards. To the ridgelines that snaked their way ever higher, to the small peaks capping the high hills, and behind them, to the imposing mass of rock and earth that made up the mountain plateaux.

"You know," I began, drawing the attention of my companions as we trudged upwards, "it sounds like a bad joke."

"What's that, lad?"

"A faithless Zealot, a failed revolutionary, a sword-wielding scholar, and a lost little lamb all walk into a bar…"

I drew a round of chuckles at that, and Jorge ducked his head in acknowledgement. "You do sound like you're onto something there. What's the punchline?"

"Maybe someone says something ill-advised to Vera and she burns the fucking place down? How should I know?" I asked, already in a high guard to fend off any retaliatory swipes from Vera's overgrown paws. She let me off with just a mock glare, though. It was nice to joke around after the heavy discussion from earlier, and all of us took the opportunity to relax a bit on the hike before we would split off to our own tasks, be it hunting or planning.

The sun sparkled above us, glinting off polished rocks and catching the backs of small lizards as they bathed in the mid-morning heat. The valleys below were redolent with the scent of sap and damp, a verdant carpet of old growth forest crowding around rushing streams and babbling rivers. It was beautiful.

I let the world flow in through my eyes and ears and nose, taking it all in as we hacked up steep ridgelines and around towering cliff faces. I was reminded once again of my first few weeks in this world, running through the hills beneath the Unclaimed Peaks, though they had felt more like real mountains back then. How naive I'd been to the scale of this world.

I remembered the feeling of powerlessness I'd felt on witnessing the Titan-Rooks, and yet now the thought excited me. I could grow that strong one day. I could rule the skies and have the freedom that those titanic creatures did. I remembered the loneliness, too, but now I had companions. Sure, not many, but it was a start; three is better than none, after all. We were about to risk our lives for one another, and they had already risked their lives for me. I would just be returning the favour, really.

The beauty and the awe and the potential were still there, but now the more biting negatives had been smoothed away by experience and friendship. I wondered how else this world would change as I did. It felt bigger, somehow. As if by understanding a smll part of it, I knew how much was still left to explore. The Endless Valleys of the Unclaimed Peaks, the Wandering States, the Iona Chasm and Copper Canyons… and those were just places I had visited so far. I still had so much to see, just in my immediate future; the Titan's Crown, the Dragon-Spines, the Riverlands and the Sunsets.

Truly, there was a lot to look forward to. 10 levels, several weeks, and a whole fucking world to explore afterwards.

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