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“Finally,” Gabriel groaned. “It’s about time the Sea gave us something good for a change.”

“Oh, you are such a whiner,” Ruda said, grinning easily. “This trip has been awesome! So far the Sea has given us free corn and all the beef we can eat.” She laughed at his slightly peaked expression.

Carving up, cleaning, parceling out and preparing the meat from the entire bison had occupied them the rest of the afternoon; Rafe and Juniper had been adamantly against letting anything go to waste, and their thrifty sensibilities had found enough traction among the group that Teal and Gabriel hadn’t gathered much sympathy when they’d suggested stopping once they judged enough meat to have been gathered.

Drying, smoking and curing meat were all very long processes, ordinarily the work of days at least, but Rafe, of course, had alchemical shortcuts a-plenty in his magic belt. Cheerily announcing that this would count toward their grade in his classes, he handed out reagents, walked them once through the processes involved, and then set the students to preparing meat for storage in a variety of ways while he built another alchemical fire, broke out his frying pan and cooked up some fresh bison steaks for their lunch.

By the time they’d taken a break to eat, their collective desire for food was diminished. Only Shaeine appeared completely unbothered by all the blood and effluvia they’d been handling. Juniper had somewhat spoiled her appetite; once she determined that nobody else wanted a share of the bison’s organs, she had been busily snacking while they worked. Watching this had seriously dampened everyone else’s appetite, albeit for different reasons.

Bison-carving kept them occupied till dusk was closer than noon had been. By then, the bison was reduced to bones, scraps of hide and various detritus that nobody wanted to touch no matter how Rafe nattered on about the uses of each bit. Evidently, wasting all that bowstring-worthy sinew offended his elven sensibilities. Juniper had eventually declared, in her cheery way, that nothing left to nature was truly wasted. She’d said this while cradling the animal’s skull, which she intended to keep as a souvenir (after having eating the brain, eyes and tongue), and was all but slathered with liquid bison.

After pausing a bit longer to clean themselves up with the aid of more of Rafe’s alchemy, they had finally continued on their way.

Sunset was far enough in progress that Trissiny, their most experienced trekker, had started making noises about camping for the night when they came across their next, and hopefully final, surprise of the day.

Now, they stood—or in Gabriel’s case, sat in the grass—around a house-sized formation of volcanic rock which put off faintly sulfur-scented steam, watching the two fae return from inspecting it.

“Safe!” the dryad yelled, waving. She had clearly taken the opportunity to scrub some of the bison bits out of her hair that had been missed earlier during Rafe’s alchemical cleaning. In fact, she was drenched from head to toe, her green hair plastered haphazardly in her face. “No elementals of any kind present—uh, that we didn’t bring with us, sorry Fross—and it’s stable, no current volcanic action. There’s a nice little current and it’s old enough the stones inside the pools are nice and rounded. It’s perfect!”

“Also, no curses or undead,” Fross chimed in. “No anything, really, I don’t think anybody’s been here in years. If ever.”

“Animals have,” Juniper said, “which is how you know it’s safe.”

“All right!” Rafe rubbed his hands together gleefully, wearing an even more manic grin than usual. “Hot springs, baby! Kids, you have not lived until you’ve had a soak in natural hot springs!”

“Um, excuse me, but I’m pretty sure I’m alive.”

“It’s a figure of speech, Fross,” Toby explained.

“There’s a nice flat area up on top where silt has settled in a depression and there’s grass growing,” Juniper said brightly. “Not as tall as down here, but it’s softer than the rocks and probably safer than camping on the flat ground where anything might come creeping out of the tallgrass.”

“Campsite ho!” Rafe shouted. “But first: WE BATHE!”

---

The rock formation looked like a tumbled heap of dark stone when approached, but as they explored it well enough to gain a sense of its proportions, it revealed itself to be rather like the stump of an old tree in shape. The “roots” of stone spread out in multiple directions, dividing up low areas between them and affording some privacy; a lot of these contained pools of water, the three lowest of which were large enough to swim in, though not deep. They were also, fortuitously, sufficiently separated by the mass of the formation that the travelers could segregate themselves by sex and soak in relative privacy. The broad, flat top of the “stump” was probably another such crater, now inactive for whatever reason. Over the eons it had filled with wind-blown dirt, and then a light carpet of soft grasses and moss.

“This is almost suspicious,” Trissiny said, leaning her head back against the rock wall; her utterly relaxed posture clashed with the tone of her observation. “It’s so…perfect. Like a gift from the gods. I almost can’t imagine it not being some kind of trap.”

“Anybody ever tell you you’re a real ray of sunshine?” Ruda asked lazily from the other side of the pool.

“No.”

“Ever wonder why?”

“There’s stuff like this all over the world,” Teal said. “This planet wasn’t shaped by entirely natural forces, you know; lots of things that seem like part of nature are actually designed for the sake of people. And yeah, a lot of them are traps, but there are also quite a few that are gifts. The gods aren’t the only powers up there that like people. Anyhow, Juno and Fross would’ve noticed anything bad lurking around here.”

“Probably,” Jupiner said lightly. While the others were sitting around the edges of the steaming pool, submerged up to the shoulders, she was floating on her back in the middle with no regard for modesty. Teal flushed and averted her eyes whenever she happened to glance at the dryad.

“Paladins can also sense evil, as I understand it,” said Shaeine. “You would likely be the first to know if we were in danger, Trissiny.”

“For a given value of ‘evil,’” she replied. “Demons, undead…a few other, related things. Sometimes people who’ve had a lot of contact with them. Things not directly, specifically opposed to the gods can slip by my senses.”

“What’s that?” Ruda grinned at her. “You mean you’re not perfect? I am stunned.”

“Don’t you ever get tired of that?” Trissiny asked with a sigh.

“Not so far, but I’ll let you know! Sure you don’t wanna come in, Shaeine?”

“I am quite comfortable, thank you,” the drow replied politely. “The steam is invigorating.” She was sitting on a rock formation beside their pool, still in her robes, ostensibly keeping watch over their clothes. The whole time they’d been soaking, she had steadfastly refused even to glance in their direction.

“I just feel kinda bad, you missing out,” said Ruda.

“Not all cultures are okay with communal bathing,” Teal admonished her. “Don’t push. In fact, hell, Imperial culture really isn’t okay with communal bathing. I’m very privileged to be an acknowledged deviant.”

“Now, is it the pacifism that’s considered deviant, or the gay?”

“Take one of each, I’m feeling generous,” Teal said lightly, closing her eyes and shifting down in the water so that only her head was above the surface.

“My culture does, in fact, practice communal bathing,” Shaeine said, still watching the horizon, “but only among family.”

“Guess I can respect that,” the pirate conceded, then playfully sent a wave in Trissiny’s direction. “Gotta say, roomie, I’m surprised you unbent enough to be naked in a big tub with a lesbian. Not afraid you’re gonna catch it?”

“Ruda,” Trissiny said wearily, “would you at least read about my faith enough to mock it intelligently? Avei has always supported the right of women to love whoever and in whatever way they choose. In fact, I was raised in a barracks among other girls, in a culture that idealized romance among women. I was thirteen before anybody thought to reassure me that being attracted to boys didn’t mean I was mentally ill.”

Ruda blinked her eyes. “Well…damn.”

“We have a sort of legend,” the paladin went on, relaxing into the water, “about one of the early Hands of Avei and her traveling companion. She was a warrior from the Eastern mountains, who left home as a girl because the Shaathists there didn’t allow women to fight. Even after joining and training with the Sisters, she was a little rough around the edges… Till she fell in with a serving girl from some noble’s house who was practicing to be a bard. They traveled together, gradually growing closer over many adventures, becoming friends and eventually more… It’s sort of an ideal, I guess.” She sighed somewhat dreamily, gazing into the distance.

“Uh, Triss?” Juniper righted herself, landing on her knees on the pool’s bottom. She was in the deepest part; only her chin stayed above the water, surrounded by a green nimbus of floating hair. “I try not to tell people their own business, but… You’re, like, the straightest girl I’ve ever met.”

“I know,” Trissiny said glumly.

“This isn’t dangerous to you, is it, Fross?” Teal asked, looking up at the pixie, who’d been drifting slowly around above them, riding the updrafts of steam.

“What? Don’t be silly, I’m not made of ice. I actually kind like the heat. The contrast is soothing. Sort of almost painful, but in a good way, y’know? Like a really intense thing that kind straddles the line between good and bad. But no, it’s not dangerous.”

“Wanna try swimming, then?” Teal suggested. “Or are your wings not built for that?”

“Pshaw, my wings are built for everything! I’ll try anything twice. You know, cos nobody ever does something right the first time. Dive bomb!” With an uncharacteristic battlecry, she buzzed down, plopping into the surface of the water near Juniper.

Strangely, the intense glow that surrounded her seemed to wink out while she was viewed through water. For the first time, the girls were treated to a view of the tiny humanoid figure of Fross, white as fresh snow, as she plunged to the bottom of the pool, then fluttered back upward.

Unfortunately, ice had begun forming around her before she got there. Fross broke the surface, lifted off a few inches and fell back, encumbered by the clump of ice in which the lower half of her body was stuck. It expanded rapidly, and soon she was drifting in the hot springs, trapped in a thick, dinner plate-sized ice floe that steamed constantly as its edges melted and re-formed. Her wings buzzed impotently, lifting it no more than an inch out of the water.

“Um,” she said sheepishly, “help?”

---

“Gotta hand it to you, Professor,” said Gabriel, relaxing in the steam, “sometimes you do come up with a pretty damn good idea.”

“Hah! All my ideas are damn good, sonny Jim. You just lack the wit to appreciate my genius. I look forward to the day when you are educated enough to understand the sheer brilliance of everything I’ve tried to teach you.” Rafe paused, then amended, “Well, the day when most people would be educated enough to appreciate it. You… We’ll have to see.”

“Oh, up yours,” he said, but without rancor. “Let me just enjoy the steam, and the knowledge that there’s a half-dozen naked girls a mere few yards from here.”

“You do realize Shaeine can probably hear you,” Toby noted, fighting a smile.

“And Shaeine knows I’m not gonna go peek. Trissiny barely needs an excuse to stab me in the guts as it is.”

“Yeah, how’s that coming along?” Rafe asked cheerily, pushing his rubber duck around the surface of the water. The boys had steadfastly refused to comment on it. “Aren’t you two supposed to be all chummy by now?”

“Ugh.” Gabriel grimaced. “I’m trying. She’s completely immune to my charms.”

“Have you tried a love potion?”

“That’s right, Professor. I, a half-demon, will slip an illegal mind-altering potion to the Hand of Avei. Just as soon as I want the entire fucking Sisterhood to mount a crusade for my head.”

“You have got to learn to take a joke, kid.”

“I’d be careful with that kind of joke, Professor,” Toby warned. “Sisters of Avei consider the use of love potions a form of rape. So does Imperial law, for that matter, but Imperial law doesn’t get quite as…worked up on the subject as they do. I doubt Trissiny would find this conversation funny at all.”

“Bah! I will not be censored!” Rafe brandished his ducky, grinning wildly.

“I think I blew it with Triss pretty hard,” Gabe said more soberly. “It’s been weeks of dishwashing and… Well, she tolerates me. Exactly as much as she did on the first night. It’s like… She’s decided the status quo is perfectly fine and is done with the whole thing. And I wouldn’t mind that so much, she’s not exactly the most delightful company… But Tellwyrn’s got a bug up her butt about this. I dunno how long this can go on before she actually does chain us together.”

“She hasn’t done that in years, and it was a much more extreme case,” Rafe said airily. “You’re probably safe.”

Gabriel straightened up. “Wait, she’s actually done that?”

“Twice, that I know of.”

He slumped back down into the water. “Well, fuck. How do you get a grumpy paladin to give you a second chance?”

“Well, there’s the usual,” Rafe suggested. “Flowers, chocolates, poetry… Of course, she’s an Avenist, so maybe the still-beating heart of an enemy…”

“I’m not trying to court her, you lunatic. I just want to get things…civil. But I can’t have a civil relationship alone. If she doesn’t cooperate…”

“Aside from self-interest with regard to Tellwyrn,” said Toby, “and by the way, Trissiny doesn’t have a lot of self-interest… Why does she need to give you a second chance?  Or you her, for that matter. That’s what I don’t get, man. Are you sure nothing else happened that night? When we talked about it you emphasized pretty hard that it was all your fault.”

“Come on, why would I lie about that?” Gabriel muttered, looking out toward the horizon.

Rafe lowered himself into the water so that it covered him up to his nose, eyes darting back and forth between the two boys.

“It’s just…” Toby frowned, obviously choosing his words with care. “When I talked to Teal and Shaeine, they both said you asked them not to discuss it with anyone else. Taking all the blame for some mutual fight doesn’t sound like you, but neither does going that hard at the Hand of Avei in the first place. Either way, I don’t get it.  What was that, Gabe? You’ve never done anything remotely like that before. It was like…the kind of thing the Church was always claiming you were going to do, and I could just never picture it. I still can’t.”

“Oh, it’s not so complicated,” Rafe said breezily. “A man can endure all manner of slings and arrows from the world at large, but when they come from a pretty girl he knows he can never, ever have? That shit’s personal.”

“Oh, ew,” Gabriel spat. “Don’t even joke, man. I’d sooner stick it in a termite nest.”

“You stuck it in a dryad, which is considerably more risky.”

“Quite aside from Trissiny’s personality, what there is of it, she’s a twig! I like curvy girls.”

“Again, let’s remember that Shaeine can probably hear us and dial this back a bit,” Toby said. “And my question stands. I’m not trying to give you a hard time, Gabe. I’m…worried.”

Gabriel lowered his eyes from his friend’s concerned face and sighed. Long seconds passed before he spoke.

“I just…had it all worked out in my head. It was going to be different here. Better, y’know? It was the University, run by Arachne Tellwyrn, famous anti-hero or anti-villain, depending on which stories you listen to. No more black and white, gods-vs-Gabriel bullshit. I was gonna meet people, maybe some like me, but at least people who wouldn’t treat me like a freak. People who understood the world was complex. And then…there she was.”

“Trissiny never treated you like a freak,” Toby said gently. “She was startled, once, when she found out you’re a demonblood. Honestly, I think half of that was her being upset because she’d accidentally hurt you.”

“I know!” Gabriel thew up his hands, splashing them both. “And this is why I’ve avoided talking about it, because there’s no way not to be reminded what an utter dumbshit I’ve been about the whole thing. She just… She gave me that look, and all I could see was every other fucking person in Tiraas who’d looked at me that way. Except it was at the University, my second chance where I thought things would be better… And it was a freaking paladin of Avei. Probably exactly the person they’d send to put me down if they found an excuse to. I overreacted.” He slumped down in the water, so low that he made ripples when he spoke. “Holy fuck, did I overreact.”

“Have you said any of this to her?” Toby asked.

Gabe snorted, causing a minor splash. “I’m terrified to even bring up the topic. I’m just trying to be nice to her, for all the good that’s doing me.  I just want…peace, with her. No more drama. It’s easier if she’s not getting riled up with more recrimination, y’know? I was the angry dumbass, so I’ll be conciliatory and eventually it’ll all go away.”

“Half of diplomacy is understanding the other person’s perspective. Avenists don’t generally care much about nice, Gabe. But they’re reasonable. You basically have her as a captive audience when you’re doing those dishes, right? Just…try opening up like you did just now. Let her see you have reasons, even if they aren’t good ones. Right now, I bet all she sees in you is a berserk demonblood who thinks he’s funny.”

“Excuse me, I’m fucking hilarious,” Gabriel said with deep dignity.

“Yup!” Rafe grinned. “Now if you could just pull it off when you’re trying to, you might get laid by something that has a pulse.”

“Go fuck your—wait a second. Juniper doesn’t have a pulse?”

“Boy,” the professor said, shaking his head, “you have the observational skills of a deaf cave bat.”

“Oh, give me a break, I was distracted by the… Well, you’ve seen them.”

“Indeed, I may have to give you that one.”

---

“Really, it’s no trouble,” Fross said nervously. “I don’t mind at all.”

“And I appreciate that, Fross,” Trissiny replied patiently. “Regardless, we should set a watch. It’s an important habit to be in, when camping out in potentially hostile territory.”

“Oh, come on,” Ruda groaned. “Why the hell are you so allergic to anything being easy?”

“Because life is not easy,” the paladin said sharply. “This is a training exercise—its purpose is to prepare us to deal with the real world. How often do you expect to have a party member who doesn’t need sleep along on a mission?”

“Trissiny is correct,” Shaeine said smoothly as Ruda opened her mouth to object again. “Posting watch is an important habit to acquire. And we are on training maneuvers, for all intents and purposes.”

Ruda thew up her hands. “Fine, what-the-fuck-ever. Wake me when it’s my turn, I guess.” She turned and stomped over to one of the tents, leaving the rest of the freshman class behind. Rafe was already in the boys’ tent, snoring a touch too loudly to be believable.

Everyone was much refreshed after a long soak in the hot springs, but most were still tired from the day’s hiking—and butchering. Glancing around at her classmates, who were mostly standing near their three tents clustered around a campfire in the upper crater of the volcanic formation, Trissiny could plainly see the weariness in many of them. Shaeine as usual was all but unreadable and Toby had divine strength to draw on, but the others were visibly drooping—even Juniper. She, of course, was hardly even tired.

“I’ll take first watch, then,” she said, giving the rest of them a smile. “Sleep well, but…if you can, not too deeply. The Golden Sea’s odd geography may protect us, but in normal territory a campfire on top of a hill like this will be visible for miles in every direction. It isn’t improbable that we’ll have visitors of some kind before dawn.”

“And on that cheery note,” Gabriel muttered, turning and dragging himself toward the tent from which the snores were emanating. “Good news: looks like we’ll have that ‘don’t sleep deeply’ thing down. Without even trying.” Toby laughed, following him in.

The crater itself was uneven, the rim of stone surrounding it even more so. On the side opposite from their approach—the uphill side, closer to the center of the Sea—it rose to a rather steep lip that almost qualified as an outcropping. Trissiny, no longer in armor but carrying sword and shield, climbed this, taking up her perch as her classmates retreated into their tents. She noticed with some gratitude that Teal and Shaeine had joined Ruda, leaving the other tent for her and Juniper. And Fross, of course, should she want to take advantage.

That seemed unlikely; the pixie was more interested in keeping company with the only other member of the party who was staying awake.

“Fross,” she said some minutes later, which she spent slowly scanning the horizons for signs of movement and her companion spent buzzing about with no apparent aim, “I don’t mean to be rude…”

The pixie came to an instant halt, hovering right in front of her. “Are you mad at me?”

“What?” Trissiny blinked her eyes, taken aback. “No. Why would I be?”

“Oh. It’s just that… Well, I’ve kinda noticed a pattern when somebody says ‘I don’t mean to be rude’ or ‘not to be rude’ or ‘sorry if this is rude’ or anything along those lines, that whatever comes next is usually pretty rude. So, uh, I’m still having kind of a hard time untangling the colloquialisms around here, but I figure if you’re about to say something rude I’ve done something to make you mad.”

Trissiny stayed silent for a moment, digesting that, then had to smile. “That is actually pretty perceptive. It…probably doesn’t mean they’re mad, per se. People can be hostile for a lot of different reasons. Most are fairly silly, and it’s honestly best to brush them off unless they’re actually threatening you.”

“I don’t…man, that makes no sense. Social interactions aren’t a zero-sum game. I mean, that’s just not how it works.”

“That’s people for you,” Trissiny said wryly.

“So, uh…why were you wanting to be hostile?”

“Oh!” She clapped a hand to her forehead. “I’m sorry, Fross, I didn’t mean to give you the wrong impression…I’m not hostile. I actually just wanted to ask you something and didn’t want to hurt your feelings because I’m not sure if it would or not.”

“Oh!” The pixie buzzed around in a rapid circle. “Oh, that’s okay then, that’s not actually rude at all! Go ahead, you can ask me whatever and if I don’t like it I can tell you so we don’t have to have the awkwardness again, ‘kay?”

“Deal,” Trissiny said with a smile. “That being established…is it possible for you to turn down your glow a little? You’re sort of wrecking my night vision.”

The pixie vibrated in midair for a moment. “…aw, man, I’m so sorry. I didn’t even think about…I mean, I’d read about how human eyes work, I did all my research before coming here… Gosh, that’s embarrassing. Um, yeah, I can repress a bit, but…”

“But?” Trissiny prompted after a silent moment.

“Well… I don’t want to be rude.”

She laughed. “I will try not to take offense.”

“Is it, uh, okay if I sit on your shoulder? See, it’s kinda hard to stay aloft with my magic dimmed, and I try not to be on the ground as a matter of policy. That is a recipe for getting stepped on. Also, there’s snakes and rats and stuff in the grass, and getting eaten is really annoying.”

“I don’t mind that at all,” Trissiny assured her, still grinning.

“Great!”

She zipped over to alight on Trissiny’s shoulder, momentarily making the problem of night vision even worse. Almost immediately, however, her white glow dimmed, then vanished entirely, leaving Trissiny able to study her classmate up close for the first time.

Fross was about three inches tall, and…fuzzy. She looked something like an anthropomorphic white moth, her humanoid figure coated in white down that glittered like snow in the starlight, with reddish highlights where it caught even the glow of the distant campfire. Her eyes were enormous (proportionately) black jewels that dominated her head, leaving no room for anything else on her face but a thin little mouth and two arched, fuzzy moth antennae. From her back sprang four wings, long and narrow like a dragonfly’s, but without the network of veins. In fact, they were all but invisible except for their frosted edges. They buzzed in short bursts, apparently unwilling to be still even when Fross wasn’t flying.

She was also very cold. Trissiny quickly began to develop a numb spot on her shoulder. Despite thinking fondly of her metal pauldrons, she found herself reluctant to dislodge the fairy. A paladin’s life was sacrifice, after all.

“While we’re sharing stuff, I have a question,” the pixie said, sitting down and folding her arms around her knees.

“Go ahead,” Trissiny replied, slowly turning to scan the empty horizon.

“Why don’t you like Gabriel?”

She was silent for a moment. “Everybody doesn’t have to get along,” she said finally. “I don’t want conflict with Gabriel. I don’t really want to interact with him at all.”

“Yeah, I kinda got that, I’m just confused about why. I mean, he tries so hard to be nice to you. I don’t understand what’s going on with you two. I guess it’s not really my business, you don’t have to explain. I’m just trying… I mean, there’s so much about human relationships I don’t get. I want to understand as much as possible, that’s all.”

“Gabriel…is annoying. And he’s a fool.”

“Well, yes. He’s a lot like Ruda, which is an opposite thing. You keep trying to give her a chance and she keeps being mean. I don’t understand what the difference is.”

Trissiny stared hard at a fixed point in the distance, forgetting for the moment to turn her head and scan. “The difference is that Ruda, at the end of the day, is only human. Whatever her bloodline or responsibilities, she’s one woman and there’s a stark limit to the amount of damage she can cause. Gabriel is part demon. If he can’t control himself, the harm he could potentially do is…staggering.”

“Yes, well, I mean, sure, but…that’s a lot of us, right? You and Toby are both pretty powerful. Shaeine the same way, you’re all connected to gods. Don’t even get me started on the mess Teal could make with that demon she’s got, and Juniper… Well, Juniper’s pretty much a force of nature. I read up on hethelax demons, and… I don’t see why Gabe’s so dangerous, really. He’s only a halfblood, and even full hethelaxi aren’t any stronger than a human, and they don’t have any magic. They’re just really, really hard to stop or kill, so of course it’s really hard to contain them if they get into a berserk mode.”

“That’s just it: they’re berserker demons. The others…and myself…have basically understandable motivations. Without incredible self-control, Gabriel can be set off and cause untold havoc.”

“So…doesn’t it make more sense to encourage him when he’s obviously trying so hard?”

Trissiny glared at the horizon, refusing to look at the pixie. “It’s not that simple, Fross.”

“Why?”

“Because…some things are just not as simple as it seems like they should be.”

“Yeah, well, okay, but… Why?”

The paladin sighed slowly. “Because the world…is imperfect.”

Fross buzzed her wings once before speaking softly. “No, it’s not.”

“Pardon?”

“The world is perfect. It’s exactly what it was meant to be, whatever that is. If it seems wrong…maybe you’re expecting something from it that it was never designed to give.”

Trissiny found herself nodding. “Maybe I am, at that.”

They lapsed into silence for a moment before Fross spoke again.

“Also, I really don’t think you understand Juniper’s motivations. I know I pretty much don’t, but… She looks pretty human, yeah, but she doesn’t think like one. At all.”

“I’ve been getting that impression more and more.”

---

Teal relieved her without having to be awakened. Trissiny was initially unsure about leaving Teal on watch—the bard was likeable and making progress in their sparring sessions, but she’d grown up in the very lap of luxury, never having to work or struggle for anything. However, as Trissiny headed toward her tent, the blossoming of flames behind her meant that Teal’s other half was taking over. Trissiny lengthened her step. She really did not want to have a conversation with Vadrieny… But at least the demon could be trusted not to nod off.

In her bedroll, she stared at the ceiling of the tent for a long time.

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Trissiny and Ruda both reached for their swords, but before either had a chance to draw, Toby stepped forward, his hands raised peaceably.

“Good morning,” he said politely. “Despite what Professor Rafe was suggesting, we have no intention of disturbing your corn. We don’t listen to him as a rule. Would you mind removing the wand from my friend, please?”

“Actually, go ahead and blast him,” Rafe said cheerily. “Boy’s half hethelax, I doubt he’ll even get a sunburn.”

“Professor,” said Gabriel tersely, trying to watch the elf out of the corner of his eye without moving, “please go fuck yourself.”

“Hah! Sass and sauciness in the face of imminent zappage! Ten points, Arquin!”

“Sideways,” Gabe clarified, “with a hatchet.”

“Enough banter,” Trissiny exclaimed. “Put down the wand, please. Nobody here wants a fight, but if it comes to one you’re not going to win.”

“Whoah, whoah, everybody just calm down,” Rafe said soothingly. “She’s not gonna shoot him, she knows Tellwyrn’s hunted people down over longer distances for less reason. Also, Triss, when you’re scrapping with elves, don’t worry about the one you see; worry about the three you don’t. Guys, this is my old buddy Ansheh. Annie, dollbaby,” he went on, turning to face the elf directly and holding out his arms for a hug. “You never come visit anymore! I was starting to worry you’d been eaten by a swallowgator or disemboweled by a jackalope.”

For a tense moment, she stared at Rafe, eyes narrowed but her expression unreadable. Then, her lips curled up in a sneer and she spoke one syllable.

“Ugh.”

She did, however, remove the wand from Gabriel’s neck, immediately stepping back out of arm’s reach. The wand stayed pointed at the ground—not overtly hostile, but ready to be brought up in an instant.

“Well,” Gabe said, rubbing his throat, “I guess that’s a sign she really does know him.”

Professor Rafe said something rapidly to the woman—Ansheh, apparently—in elvish. She replied in the same language, her posture still wary and expression faintly disdainful. The students glanced about at each other as this exchange drew longer.

“Is anybody gonna let us in on the joke?” Ruda asked finally. Rafe and the elf ignored her, but Teal spoke up in a low voice.

“He’s getting the news on the region. Apparently her tribe live around here, usually… Oh, wait, no, they travel through this area a lot. They’re nomadic. They’re not here now, though, she’s scouting the region to check up on patches of crops like this one and to see if…” Her voice trailed off and she grew a shade paler. “Centaurs.”

“To see if centaurs?” Ruda snorted. “Well, that’s good to know. Personally, I hate it when centaurs.”

“Don’t joke,” Trissiny said tersely.

“Listen, shiny boots, the day I stop joking because you told me—”

“Ruda,” Teal said more urgently. “She’s right. Centaurs are not a joking matter.”

“They are not,” agreed Ansheh flatly. The two of them had ceased talking as Ruda grew louder, and now she switched to Tanglish and addressed herself directly to the students. “The presence of a full horde in the region is the reason my tribe have moved on.” Rafe started to say something again in elvish, but she cut him off with a slashing gesture. “Are you not some manner of teacher, Admestus? Then do not presume to ‘protect’ your students from truth. I will warn you, and them, of a danger in the region as I would any traveler in good faith.”

“Are they still nearby?” Trissiny asked, tense.

Ansheh shook her head. “The main horde has moved on, and the Sea has shifted. They are nowhere near. However, there are fresher tracks of a smaller band that may have split off from them, within miles of here. Forty to sixty, maybe. I have three times seen tracks of individuals, doubtless sent out to scout.”

“Time? Location? Direction, even?”

“You’re new to the Golden Sea, little warrior,” the elf replied, her face softening into the merest hint of a smile with more than a hint of condescension. “These things cannot be planned for, here.”

“Then how do you maneuver, or manage not to get lost from your tribe?”

“There are ways.” Finally, she holstered the wand, then reached behind herself into the tallgrass and plucked two long stalks, one with each hand. The left she held up before them, perpendicular to the ground. “The center of the Golden Sea can never be reached, but one can travel toward or away from it; one can go deeper in, or seek to escape, and the Sea will allow this.” As she spoke, she manipulated the other stalk with the fingers of her right hand with amazing deftness, twisting it into a figure eight. “To travel around, though, is to travel at the Sea’s whim. One place may be next to another place one moment, on the opposite rim the next. A person may never see it shifting, but in the instant you close your eyes, the world realigns around you.”

“We know this, thanks,” Gabriel said, reaching up to rub his throat again. His expression was just barely on the right side of a glare.

“It is in traveling around that one must make accommodations with the Sea itself,” Ansheh continued, ignoring him. “You initiates of the tauhanwe University tie a rope to yourselves that leads you back home. The Sea allows this because it does not affect the Sea itself, but only how you pass through it. My people align ourselves with the will and the way of the Sea. It is kind to us because we are kind to it, because we are of it. We trust in it to lead us where we should go.”

“The fuck does that even mean?” Ruda demanded.

“It is a thing that is done,” said Ansheh, gazing inscrutably at her, “not a thing that is said.”

“…the fuck does that mean?”

“The centaurs,” the elf continued in the same even tone, “are practitioners of dark magic. They twist the Sea to carry them where they wish to go. It works, until it does not. That is why we are always alarmed to find centaurs where they are rarely seen. Right after the Golden Sea has struck back against their manipulation and thrown them off…that is when they are most angry.”

Trissiny blinked her eyes twice, then shook her head. The elf’s roundabout explanation—or what was apparently meant to be an explanation—made her brain feel the way her stomach did when she tried to digest richer food than she was used to eating. “All right, well… Can you tell us anything about how close the centaurs are? Any suggestions how we avoid them?”

“They are few, and they are not here,” Ansheh said infuriatingly. “’Close’ means nothing here. You will probably not find them unless you wish to, or they wish to find you. The Sea does not reward their sorcery.”

“…okay then. Thank you.”

Ansheh nodded gravely to her.

“Right then!” For a few moments while he and Ansheh had been speaking, Rafe had seemed almost concerned. His irrepressible cheeriness was back now, in such force that it made his momentary lapse seem like a trick of the light. “Nothing for it but to press on! We’ll either meet centaurs or we won’t, and probably not more than sixty.”

“Not more than sixty?!” Ruda planted her fists on her hips, glaring at him. “I don’t even know what the deal is with these centaurs, but if they’re hostile, sixty is a pretty big fucking deal!”

“Nonsense!” he bellowed. “Bring them on in their hundreds, in their hordes! We shall show them what it means to be, uh…paladins, pirates, priests and whatever-all else! The bards will sing of our triumph for ages to come!”

Ansheh gave him a flat look and said softly, “Tifau.” It was one of those words that didn’t need a translation to communicate quite plainly. She made three soft clicks with her tongue in a syncopated rhythm, and a shape rose out of the tallgrass behind her.

It was horse-sized, but built more like a deer, with delicate legs and cloven hooves, and a long tail ending in a graceful tuft of fur. A single, spiraling horn rose from above its eyes. The unicorn’s coat was silvery white, but had been painted with vertical streaks in shades of brown and gold; hiding motionless in the tallgrass, it was as invisible as the elf had been.

Fross gasped audibly. “Pretty.”

She placed one hand against the unicorn’s neck and then leaped onto its unsaddled back, in a smooth motion that resembled water flowing uphill. Ansheh clicked her tongue once more and her mount turned to face the endless sea of tallgrass; she looked over her shoulder at them and nodded once, curtly. “We will not be back here in time to harvest. Take as much corn as you need; the rest will go to the crows as the wards fade.” Then the unicorn bounded away, making only the most impossibly soft noise as it disturbed the grass in passing. In seconds they were lost to sight.

“Huh,” said Gabriel. “After Tellwyrn and Sunrunner, I figured the old stereotype about elven mysticism was bunk. Maybe it’s just the wild ones.”

“Yeah, no, the stereotype is bull,” Rafe replied, grinning. “Don’t go expecting any elves you meet to act like that; they’ll either laugh at you or shoot you. Ansheh’s the biggest drama ham I ever met. You give her attention, she’ll give you a show.”

“Also, it may be a bad idea to judge anyone by Tellwyrn’s example,” Toby noted.

“That, too,” Rafe agreed. “Welp! You heard the nice lady with the ears, kids. Since I was just talking about finding food a few minutes ago, let’s CORN IT UP!”

---

“So what’s the big issue with centaurs?” Ruda asked after they had resumed their trek. Rafe was again in the lead, and again singing to himself in elvish. Ruda had produced a bottle of bourbon from within her coat and was working at it. Apparently, their professor had similar bag-of-holding enchantments on the pouches at his belt; that, anyway, seemed to be where he was keeping all their supplies, including the corn they’d just picked. “The way you guys reacted I’d have thought you were talking about Elilial’s own brood.”

“They might as well be,” Trissiny said darkly. “Centaurs are diabolists. That magic the elf was talking about that they use, it’s pure evil.”

“Oh, everything’s evil with you,” Ruda said dismissively.

Trissiny drew in a breath and let it out slowly. “How many things have you actually heard me describe as evil? Name two.”

“Centaurs and Teal.” The pirate grinned at her and had a long pull of bourbon.

“Honesty, I thought centaurs were a myth,” Gabriel said.

“History,” said Teal, “not myth. They only still live in the Golden Sea, because the shifting geography makes it pretty much impossible to go in and hunt them down. The Sisters of Avei have wiped them out everywhere else.”

“Big fuckin’ surprise, there!”

“Ruda,” Teal said sharply, “the fact that you can’t get along with your roommate doesn’t mean you get to call all Avenists genocidal maniacs. They’re anything but. The Sisters gave up trying to deal with centaurs diplomatically and simply killed them en masse, and nobody, not even the Omnists or Izarites, argued with them about it. That should tell you everything you need to know about centaurs. The demon magic isn’t the worst part, though.”

“We don’t need to hear about it,” Trissiny said, her face hardening.

“Triss, I’m gonna have to argue with that,” Teal replied. “This group is three-fourths women. If we even might meet centaurs…everybody deserves to know what to expect.” She turned her head to face Ruda again as they walked. Rather than going single file as before, the students had drawn together in a clump with Fross darting overhead and the boys bringing up the rear. “Centaurs don’t have a word for ‘rape’ in their language. Or maybe it’d be better to say they have only words for that, and none for love.”

There was a brief period of relative quiet while Ruda scowled, the bottle in her hand momentarily forgotten. The swish of grass, the buzz of Fross’s wings and Rafe’s less-than-tuneful singing were the only sounds.

“Wait, you mean they…” Ruda shook her head. “These are the things that are horses on the bottom half, right? How does that even work?”

“It does not work,” Teal said grimly. “That’s not how I would prefer to die, thank you.”

Another brief silence fell, which again, Ruda broke. “Well…shit. Good on the Sisters, then. Hell, I kinda hope we meet some, now. Wouldn’t mind killing a few of those myself.”

“You really don’t possess a shred of common sense, do you?” Trissiny asked.

“Really, blondie?” Ruda tilted her head back to give her a long look from under the wide brim of her hat. “You wanna start this up?”

“Let us not start anything up, please,” Shaeine said quietly. “In fact, unless there is something further we urgently need to know about centaurs, I suggest a change of topic. This one is likely to inflame tempers.”

Ruda grunted and tilted her head back, drinking. They all watched the level of bourbon in the bottle go down.

“Ruda,” Toby said from behind them, “it occurs to me that I always seem to see you drinking something, but I’ve never actually seen you drunk.”

“Yeah?” She grinned at him over her shoulder. “Or maybe you’ve never seen me sober.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask about this, too,” Gabriel added. “It’s supposed to be a dry University, but I’ve seen you hitting the bottle right in front of Tellwyrn. How come the rules don’t seem to apply to you?”

“Diplomatic immunity,” she said cheerfully. “It’s good to be a pirate, boys. Incidentally, anybody have any clue just where the fuck this guy is taking us?”

Rafe paused in his current song to shout “TO GLORY!” without turning around.

“Wow,” Ruda muttered, “I walked right the fuck into that, didn’t I. Well, I hope glory’s got a roof. We’re gonna get rain here in a day or two.”

“Wait, what?” Gabriel peered around at the sky, which was deep blue and cloudless. “Maybe you are drunk, after all.”

“Up yours, hell’s bells. That’s your new nickname, by the way. I grew up on ships; don’t fucking talk to me about weather.” She twisted her mouth in a grimace, then took another drink. The bottle was getting close to empty. “I could tell you more exactly than that, but…I dunno how much this place is fucking with my weather sense. There’s no decent-sized bodies of water anywhere around, and who the hell knows how it all works when the ground isn’t even lashed down properly. Rain’s coming, though. Bank on it.”

Before anyone could reply, the ground began to rumble.

“What the—earthquake!” Gabriel cried, reflexively ducking down.

“Shh!” Up ahead, Rafe turned and waved his arms frantically, shushing them as if he hadn’t been singing at the top of his lungs moments ago. “SHHHHH!”

Juniper’s gasp of obvious delight only added to the confusion, at least until she pointed off to their right. “Look! Look! Bison!”

Carefully, the eight of them crouched low enough to almost hide themselves, peering through the upper fronds of the tallgrass. Fross belatedly fluttered down to join them after being hissed at and urgently beckoned by Ruda.

It was an awe-inspiring sight. The herd stretched nearly to the horizon beyond, but they were passing close enough that those nearest the students were clearly visible, their numbers fading into a deep brown expanse that moved as if with one mind. The bison were running parallel to them, beginning to curve away, but as the freshmen watched, they gradually slowed, coming to a halt and beginning to graze. No longer running, they could be examined individually. Massive, shaggy beasts with huge hammerlike heads surmounted by black horns, each bison was an impressive spectacle. Together in their sheer numbers, they were breathtaking.

“Wow,” Gabriel whispered.

“Um,” said Ruda softly, “what happens if they all charge this way?”

“Well, then we get trampled,” Rafe said cheerfully. “That’s not likely, though. So, who wants to go bag one?”

“Every time I think you’ve said the stupidest fucking thing you can possibly say, you open your mouth again,” said Ruda.

“Oh, don’t be such a sourpuss, Punaji. Elves hunt these.”

“They hunt them with staves, spears and arrows, while riding unicorns,” Teal hissed. “Let’s not provoke the herd, please.”

“Oh, but you were saying we need meat, right?” said Juniper. “One of those would keep us supplied for…well, probably the whole trip, assuming we’re not planning to be out here more than a week or so. That’s about what Tellwyrn said, right?”

“Yeah, well, the fact remains, those are bison, there are thousands of them, and we are really not equipped or prepared to do any hunting,” said Gabriel.

“Lemme see what I can do,” she replied, and stood upright, disregarding the hisses of her classmates. The dryad strode forward through the grass directly toward the herd.

“The thing that bothers me most is how we didn’t hear them before they were this close,” Teal muttered. “If the Sea can drop thousands of bison right on top of us…”

She didn’t bother to finish. Everyone knew where that thought was going: why not centaurs?

They all reflexively ducked even lower when the herd spotted Juniper and shied away. Those nearest the dryad seemed to move as one organism, the effects of their alarm rippling backward. She kept approaching slowly, though, making a beeline for one specimen standing relatively near. The general consensus of the herd seemed to be that she wasn’t a threat worth running from, but they weren’t interested in being approached; they began to resume their course at a brisk walk.

All except for the single animal Juniper was approaching. It moved to face her directly, tail swishing behind as it studied her. There was something almost poetic about the way it broke from the herd to acknowledge the dryad’s approach; suddenly it wasn’t facing the same direction as the others, nor moving along with them. From part of a unit, it transitioned to an individual, shifting its allegiance to the dryad. It did shy backward a few steps as she drew closer, hands upraised, but eventually allowed her to stroke its face.

“Quick bit of trivia,” said Rafe, “dryads have an innate and powerful connection with nature. The rest of you, do not try to pet wild animals. Especially not ginormous ones with big-ass horns.”

“Got it, thanks,” said Gabriel. Nobody else commented; nobody tore their eyes from the spectacle before them.

It was a spectacle worth seeing.

The woman stood before the mighty beast, her green hair and golden skin framed by its dark, shaggy bulk, running her hands over its face, scratching in its bushy mane, stroking along its giant horns. All the while, behind them, the herd was picking up speed, heading away and leaving one of its members to the dryad’s attentions. Juniper had crossed her arms, now, for some reason, each hand taking hold of the horn on the opposite side of the bison’s head.

When it happened, it was almost too fast to watch.

She quite suddenly un-twisted her arms, throwing her weight to one side. The audible crack of the bison’s massive neck breaking was immediately lost in the thud of its huge weight slamming to the ground on its side. It landed, head twisted at a horrible angle; its legs kicked feebly a couple of times, then with startling suddenness, the creature stilled.

The herd took this as the signal to leave. In the next moments, nothing was audible but the constant thunder of their stampede. Blessedly, they held to their previous course and did not turn toward those watching, but some of the students had difficulty balancing due to the shaking of the ground. Despite their speed, the incredible numbers of the bison meant it went on for some minutes.

Eventually, though, the ragged rear edge of the herd passed, and then they were retreating toward the horizon. As soon as the noise lessened enough that she could be heard, Juniper waved cheerily back at the others, shouting, “I got lunch!”

Ruda summed up what they were all thinking.

“Holy shit.”

They approached slowly, warily. Juniper seemed as cheerful as usual, and rather pleased with herself. “It’s a lot of meat,” she said proudly. “Like I said, this should keep us set for the rest of the trip. How much storage space have you got in that belt, Professor? Oh, well, Ruda and Gabe have the same kind of enchantments on their coats, we’ll manage. You don’t mind helping carry, right, guys?”

“Um. No?” Gabriel offered hesitantly.

“Great! Let’s just get this started, then.” Stepping around to the side of the felled bison, she pulled back her arm and drove a hand directly into its shoulder, sinking up to the wrist in flesh. Gabe clapped a hand over his mouth and turned away. “Oh…oops, I’m sorry I should’ve thought, first… Did anybody want its hide? Cos, y’know, it’s pretty big so I guess it doesn’t matter where we tear it. I’ve heard people trade the hides for good money, though.”

“I don’t think that’s important right now,” Trissiny said carefully. “We’re survivalists, for the moment, not fur traders.”

“Great!” the dryad said, beaming. “We can still make use of the skin, I’m sure, but I guess it doesn’t matter how many pieces it’s in.” She grasped the torn edges of the bison’s thick hide with both hands and pulled, ripping a long seam open across its side, baring steaming muscle. Gabriel retched and doubled over; fortunately Juniper didn’t seem to be paying him any attention. She sank the fingers of one bloody hand into the muscle and pulled, dragging out a large chunk. Strings of tissue snapped, flicking droplets of blood across her face and upper chest, leaving her with a thick handful of raw meat.

“Um, I always forget details like this,” she said thoughtfully. “How important is it to you guys that meat be cooked before you eat it?”

“It’s fairly important,” Teal said, her voice faint.

“Ah. Well, I guess we’ll need to make a fire, then…” She pulled off a few strands of muscle and tucked them into her mouth, slurping them up like spaghetti. Gabe, having chosen that moment to look up at her again, immediately turned away; Toby stepped over to drape an arm over his shoulders as Juniper carried on with her mouth full. “Y’don’ min’ if I do, righ’?”

“Knock yourself out,” said Ruda, and finished off her bourbon.

“You’ve got blood in your hair,” Fross noted.

“Yeah, I’ll clean up after we’re done here,” the dryad said cheerfully. In fact, she had apparently opened an artery in her prey and now had blood splattered across herself rather liberally, including dripping from the corners of her mouth. “Doesn’t seem much point when I’m just gonna get all bloody again! Now, who’s got a knife? Or I can just keep tearing, it’s no trouble!”

< Previous Chapter                                                                                                                           Next Chapter >

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It quickly became apparent which of them were accustomed to hiking, and which were not. Very rapidly the sun climbed, the air heated, and the more indoorsy of the students began to struggle with the erratic pace Professor Rafe set as he darted back and forth, picking plants and usually shouting gleefully about them. Juniper, likewise, would sometimes rush away to investigate something growing, but little that they found made much of an impression on the other students. The Golden Sea was a featureless plain stretching in all directions, with not so much as a shrub to break the shimmering monotony. The variety of grasses to be found was limited and of interest only to their resident herbalist and dryad. For the most part, the rest of the freshman class were preoccupied with the heat and their aching legs.

Just about when the sun had risen high enough to banish the colors of dawn and turn the sky crystal blue, they came to a sudden halt when Gabriel let out a yelp.

“The mountain!” he shouted, facing back the way they’d come. “It’s gone!”

“Nonsense, it’s right where we left it,” Professor Rafe said easily. “We’re gone.”

“Wh—I know we’re gone, but we’ve barely been walking an hour! That mountain is freaking huge, we should still be able to see it from here.”

“Oh, you worry too much,” Rafe said, grinning easily. “Like you said, it’s huge. I’m sure we’ll find it again when we need it. For now: further up and farther in!”

“Are you nuts?!” Ruda shouted. “The Golden Sea shifts around and changes, everyone knows that. We’ve been shunted off to fuck knows where! How the hell are we gonna get back?”

“I’m sure something’ll turn up,” their professor said breezily, turning back around and strolling off. “Come on, that’s why it’s called an adventure! Get into the spirit, Punaji. Now keep a lookout for any interesting geographical features, kids. We’ll wanna stop pretty soon to rest our legs and have some breakfast. Sitting down in standing tallgrass is kind of a pain, much less making a fire.”

“I knew it!” Ruda pointed at him, turning to glare around at the others. “I fucking called it. The moron’s led us out here to die.”

“Then we shall die as heroes!” Rafe bellowed, already ten yards distant. “ONWARD TO GLORY!”

“Shut the fuck up, you asshole!”

“If I may?” Shaeine raised her voice only slightly, but it was sufficiently out of her normal character that both Ruda and Gabe stopped and turned to look at her. “Do you recall Professor Tellwyrn saying in our first class that there is a geas upon the University that prevents outsiders from knowing its true name?”

“Yeah, what of it?”

“There is more to it than that. Initiates of the Unseen University can always find it from the Golden Sea. The general rule of navigating the Sea is that going uphill leads one farther in, while going downhill leads toward the edges.

“Wait, there’s a hill?” Gabriel looked around, then lifted one of his feet and checked under it, as if expecting to find a squashed hill beneath his boot.

“The incline is slight, but it’s noticeable,” said Trissiny. “Look to the east or west.”

“Moving laterally is…effectively random,” Shaeine went on, “in terms of where the Sea will put you. For most people, exiting the region may mean departing at any point at it circumference, but we will always come back to Last Rock.”

“Oh. Okay.” Ruda let out a breath slowly. “That…would’ve been nice to know a little earlier.”

“Yup!” said Rafe cheerily, coming back to join them. “And since our resident pixie is clearly an ice elemental and not an exposition fairy—”

“Excuse me, but those are a myth,” Fross interjected.

“—you can assume that Shaeine came by her knowledge the old-fashioned way, by braving the wrath of Grumpypants McPonytail to access the library. Which you could also have done, had you been arsed to do the slightest of prep work before swaggering off into one of the world’s most dangerous wildernesses. This is what we in the biz call a ‘teaching moment.’” Grinning, he pointed a finger at Ruda and pantomimed squeezing a clicker with his thumb. “Zzzzzap! You’re dead.”

“Up yours, twinkletoes.”

“Wait, who’s Grumpypants McPonytail?” Fross asked.

“The librarian,” said Gabriel.

“I…wait, what? The librarian’s name is Weaver. I’m positive it is, I pay close attention to him. He said he was gonna put me in a bottle and use me as a lamp if I got frost on the books.”

“Grumpypants is his nickname,” Rafe said solemnly, “a hard-earned moniker that gives due credence to his vast contributions to the field of being grumpy.”

“Oh.” Fross buzzed around in a circle a couple of times. “Should…should I call him that?”

“Yes!” chorused Rafe, Gabe and Ruda, wearing identical grins.

“No,” Trissiny said firmly, dividing a hard look among the three. “Don’t make fun of her. How would you like it if someone set you up for that kind of rude awakening?”

“Oh, pish tosh,” Rafe said cheerily. “How do you think Arachne welcomed me to the staff?”

“I am so confused,” said Fross.

Toby cleared his throat loudly. “Since we seem to have stopped anyway, how does breakfast sound to anyone else?”

“Remember what I was saying just now about camping in the tallgrass?” Rafe said condescendingly. “We can do that if you really want, but honestly, it’s a recipe for getting really itchy even before the bugs start climbing up your clothes.”

“Bugs?” Gabriel squawked, jumping to the side and looking down under his feet again.

“I remember, thanks,” Toby said patiently, then pointed off to the group’s right. “How’s that?”

Visible above the shoulder-high grass about thirty yards away was a flat-topped outcropping of stone. Its surface was irregular and slightly angled, but looked large enough to hold them all comfortably, and more besides. It had definitely not been there a moment ago.

“Ha-hah!” Rafe crowed. “Brilliant! Good eye, Mr. Caine, your quick thinking has saved us all a raging case of ass grass! ONWARD TO BREAKFAST!” He charged off toward the rocks, flailing with both arms to push tallgrass out of his way.

“I still say we’re gonna—”

“Oh, give it a rest, Ruda,” Trissiny said sharply, and stalked off after Rafe.

The pirate lifted her head to scratch at her head, peering quizzically after her roommate. “What’s with her?”

“Dunno,” said Gabe, following the paladin. “Don’t care. Imma go sit down.”

---

 

The lowest end of the flat rock was about chest-high, and had a convenient pile of tumbled stones on one side that enabled them to scramble up without difficulty. Rafe commented, as he set up a fire, that this boulder was probably a piece of the same mountain on which the University sat, hurled into the Golden Sea millennia ago by the explosion that had half-sunk the plateau. His pupils were mostly disinterested—only Gabriel was paying him any attention, and that was not to anything Rafe was saying, but to the fire he’d set up by liberally coating a handful of tallgrass stalks in oil from a vial he’d taken from his belt. They burned as hot and steadily as a stack of wood.

Rafe sang off-key in elvish as he fried bacon and eggs. He and his cook fire were set up on the tallest part of the rock, and also the only completely flat one. The eight students sat in small clumps along the long, downward-sloping surface, positioned mostly facing west to keep the sun out of their eyes. Even without being blinded, there was no escaping the heat. None of them wanted to be anywhere near the fire.

“Aren’t you hot under all that?” Teal asked, sitting down beside Shaeine, who as usual when outdoors, kept her hood well up. “I thought Professor Rafe gave you sun oil for your skin.”

“He did. I don’t like to complain,” the drow demurred. “The heat I can suffer; without the shade of my hood, I’m afraid my eyesight is rather poor in this level of illumination. At home, I’d thought being out in the sun would be like walking in the agricultural caverns, with their sun crystals. I’m afraid they do not do justice to the real thing.”

Teal nodded, a smile tugging at her lips. “So…aren’t you hot under all that?”

Shaeine shifted slightly. “…extremely, yes.”

“Oh!” The bard sat bolt upright, then clapped a hand to her face. “Oh, damn it, I’m sorry… I meant to do this before we set up, but I overslept and then it just went right out of my head. Hang on.” Pulling over her backpack, she pried one of its smaller compartments open and withdrew an oblong leather case. “Here. I got this for you in town. It was gonna be a surprise…just, ahem, a more timely one. Sorry about that.”

Shaeine took the little case carefully and flicked it open with her thumbs. Inside nestled a pair of rectangular eyeglasses, made of smoky black glass.

“They’re enchanted,” Teal said a little nervously. “Should protect your eyes from the glare, even though they won’t cover your whole face, obviously. It seems to work for Natchua. I thought the rimless ones were more your style, though… Oh, and the rubber coatings for the earpieces are detachable, so I got the ones in dark red and green. Awarrion colors, right?”

Gingerly, Shaeine unfolded the glasses and slipped them into the depths of her hood. After a moment’s adjusting, she lowered the cowl of her robe, revealing her face; her hair glowed under the full sunlight. The dark glasses made her look oddly rakish, in contrast to her serene demeanor.

“Thank you, Teal,” she said softly. “This was extremely thoughtful.”

Teal grinned delightedly. “You like ’em?”

“I do. Very much.” She smiled in return, an expression that was just a perceptible hair warmer than her usual polite smile. After a moment, Teal, cleared her throat and glanced away, biting her lower lip.

“Well, it’ll at least help out here. Honestly, I don’t know how you’ve been managing in Ezzaniel’s class.”

“With my eyes narrowed to slits, actually. It is less than optimal, but allows me to preserve some vision, at least. And I am accustomed to using other senses to compensate.”

“Wait, wait, hold up,” said Ruda from a few feet away, craning her neck to look around Teal at the drow. “Are you telling me that on our first class, you fought me to a draw with your eyes closed?!”

“Not closed,” Shaeine clarified. “Narrowed.”

The pirate groaned and collapsed backward onto the rock. “My humiliation is complete. I should give Papa back the sword and become a fisherwoman.”

“Or,” Shaeine said gently, “apply yourself in Professor Ezzaniel’s class and return home a better warrior than you left.”

“No, no.” Ruda placed her hat over her face and waved a hand dismissively. “It’s all over. I’ll just lie here and wait for decomposition. Clearly, I do not even deserve a proper burial at sea.”

“Now, help me out here, ’cause I can’t always tell,” Gabriel said, grinning. “Is this ironic self-pity, or do you actually need your diaper changed?”

“Arquin, if my legs weren’t so fucking sore, one of ’em would be halfway up your ass right now.”

“Whoah, girl, let’s save that for the third date,” he said, grinning, then barreled on before she could reply. “I like your vest, by the way. I don’t think I’ve seen you in that before. Is it armor?”

Under her long coat, Ruda wore a tight midriff-baring vest of sturdy leather, embroidered sparingly with blue thread to offset it obviously utilitarian design. “Yeah,” she said without looking out from under her hat. “It’s armored.”

“Well, I should point out that it leaves your tummy exposed. Y’know, the part that has all your vital organs?”

“Just because you can point something out doesn’t mean you should, Gabe,” Toby remarked.

“Well, what can I say,” Ruda shrugged. “I’m a creature of style. I’ll be the swankiest disemboweled corpse in the group.”

“Oh, don’t listen to her,” Juniper said cheerfully, “she’s just funning you again. That’s for support.”

“June,” Ruda said, a note of warning in her voice.

Gabriel blinked and cocked his head. “Support?”

“Yeah!” the dryad bubbled on. “We’re gonna be doing a lot of physical activity on this trip, probably, and Ruda’s pretty busty. Breasts actually get really uncomfortable if you just let ’em bounce around. Like, even painful, for the bigger ones. They’re just glandular tissue and a coating of fat, with a lot of nerve endings, so they need some artificial structure to avoid getting hurt.”

“Really,” Gabriel said, grinning broadly. Across from him, Toby sighed.

“Juniper,” Ruda said more firmly, sitting up and adjusting her hat.

“Yup!” Juniper went on blithely. “Well, not mine, of course, but I don’t really have the same kind of nervous system you guys do. Also my internal structure is more…well, that’s kinda off the topic. She’s probably fine with a good brassiere most of the time, but when we’re gonna be out—”

“Juniper,” Ruda said sharply, finally getting the dryad’s attention.

“Hm?”

“Remember when you asked me to warn you when you were talking about things that aren’t for polite company?”

“Uh, yes?” The pirate stared at her evenly. Juniper gazed back, nonplussed. “…what about it?”

“I think she means you’re doing that now,” Fross piped up.

“What? I… Wait, really?” Juniper frowned. “You don’t talk about breasts in public?”

“Not as a rule, no.”

“But that’s just crazy,” she protested. “Boys love breasts. Even the gay ones. Girls, too. Everyone, just about! It’s pretty much a universal positive. Everybody can gather together and bond over breasts. Nobody doesn’t like them!”

“She speaks wisdom!” Gabriel proclaimed, his grin having reached almost Rafe-like proportions. “This is a profound revelation of truth and society would be better for everyone if the whole world accepted Juniper’s understanding.”

“See, he gets it!” The dryad nodded enthusiastically. “Gabe definitely loves breasts.”

“It’s true,” he agreed.

“And he could really benefit from an open discussion of the subject, too. I mean, I like being roughed up a bit…well, heck, I like just about everything…but I’m concerned for the first human girl he sleeps with, if he’s not a bit more gentle.”

Gabriel’s smile slipped. “Uh, wait a second, Juno…”

“I mean, really, you don’t seem to grasp that that’s one scenario where you want to suck on something without trying to suck it off, y’know?”

Ruda fell back to the stone, howling with laughter.

“Wait, stop!” Gabriel waved his arms frantically. “I changed my mind! I’m with Ruda, now. Inappropriate! Subject closed!”

Juniper blinked her eyes twice, glanced back and forth between him and Ruda, then sighed, her shoulders slumping. “Aw, man… I can’t say anything right, can I?”

“Aw, c’mere, you,” Ruda said cheerfully, getting up and going to sit down beside the dryad. She threw an arm over Juniper’s shoulders. “You’re an adorable little numbnut, y’know that? Don’t ever change.”

“Thanks, I’ll…try not to? Oh, but I don’t actually have nuts. I’m not technically a tree, you know.”

“So noted.”

“Also, nothing on me is numb.”

Ruda grinned diabolically at Gabriel. “So I hear.”

“Students! Companions! Fellow adventurers!” Rafe waved a spatula at them from the top of the rock. “BEHOLD! I give you the glory that is EGGS AND BACON! And also beans.”

---

 

“We have to what?” Gabriel exclaimed.

“Hunt!” Professor Rafe cried exultantly, stomping ahead of them through the tallgrass. It was late midmorning and several of the students were as worn out and hungry as they’d ever been at the end of a long day. Rafe had finally settled down and set a more reasonable pace, after he ran out of things to show them. It hadn’t taken long; there was a starkly finite number of grass species to be found, and after the flat rock on which they’d paused for breakfast, the Golden Sea had stubbornly refused to yield any more interesting geographical features.

“None of us knows anything about hunting!”

“At least one of you does,” Rafe said cheerfully, glancing back over his shoulder. “And really, Gabe, you might wanna let someone else get the next round of whining. I admire your enthusiasm, but we’re all here to learn! Well, you’re all here to learn. So maybe you set up camp and, say, Fross can whinge and gripe about everything.”

“Um, is he serious?” Fross asked nervously, fluttering along just above the tallgrass. “Is this humor? I don’t really have anything to gripe about.”

“Why the hell didn’t you bring enough food?!” Gabriel bulled on.

“Because, princess, the whole point of this outing is for you lot to try your hand at keeping your butts alive in the howling wilderness! What, you want I should bring along a Butler, set up a pavilion each evening? Have your meals catered? Maybe with an orchestra and dancers, yes?” Gabriel fell to cursing under his breath; Rafe laughed at him and went on. “The eggs you just ate were all I brought. We’ve got beans, jerkey, hardtack and tea. That is it, boys and girls. From this point on, you wanna eat, you best damn well find something to eat!”

“We could stay stocked up on protein by grazing as we go,” Juniper said brightly. “There’s lots of bugs in this grass.”

During the general outpouring of groans at this suggestion, and Juniper’s confused response, Toby shortened his pace slightly, falling back to walk beside Trissiny, who’d appointed herself rear guard.

“You seem to be in your element,” he commented.

To her horror, she felt a flush climbing up her neck; she blurted out before it could take hold in her face: “Well, it’s not my first hike, by a long shot. I mean, we didn’t do a lot of walking for its own sake, but, yeah, Sisters in training do cover wilderness survival. It’s pretty important for those who plan on going into the Silver Legions. It’s not really my thing, per se. Not that I mind it.” Oh, goddess, Trissiny, shut up, she commanded herself silently. “I guess, yeah, I’m maybe a little less out of my element than the others. Well, some of the others. I don’t mean you! I mean, I don’t know what kind of training you have.” Shut! Up!

Toby, fortunately, laughed softly. He had a nice laugh; it made her feel included, not mocked. “The walking doesn’t bother me; Omnist monks keep pretty fit. The sun definitely doesn’t, of course.”

“Oh, right, yes. Omnu. Sun god, that makes sense.” What is going on?! she berated herself. When did I forget how to hold a conversation? This had been the first time they’d talked alone in weeks. She didn’t remember it being this awkward before. Of course, the last time had been before the…incident.

Toby nodded. “My complexion is too dark to burn, ordinarily, anyway, but it is nice not to have to worry about sunstroke. It’s the little things that make a paladin’s life bearable, eh?” He grinned at her sidelong; she couldn’t help smiling rather foolishly back.

“I know you have that aura of serenity you can use… I didn’t realize Omnu… Well, actually, now that I open my mouth I’m remembering I have no idea what I’m talking about. I don’t know what Omnist paladins get.”

“Don’t you have any special perks? Like, an aura of command or something?”

She had to laugh at that. “Do I seem like I have an aura of command?”

“Well, yes,” he said frankly. “I’m not the only one who’s noticed, either. Honestly, I suspect that’s why your roommate seems to butt heads with you; I don’t think she likes authority very much.”

Trissiny didn’t know what to say to that. The silence began to stretch, feeling heavier with each passing second; almost frantically, she grasped at the first thing that came to mind. “Well, it’s not a divine gift, but apparently I’m a General in the Imperial Army. I mean…automatically, by default, all Hands of Avei are. They didn’t tell me about that at the Abbey… Mother Narny probably didn’t want it to go to my head. I, uh, had a kind of awkward encounter with your roommates, the first time I ran across them. Apparently they can’t even talk to me unless I say ‘at ease’ first. It was a challenge to figure that out, with them doing nothing but standing at attention and answering only direct questions. Tellwyrn had to explain it to me.”

At that, he laughed again. She could listen to his laugh all day… “Yeah, they mentioned that. Rook’s got a case of hero worship going for you, I think.”

“Really? Isn’t he the one who looks rumpled even when he’s not?”

“Hah, that’s a pretty good description! Well, it’s like I said: aura of command. If it’s not a gift from Avei, it must just be you, then.” He smiled over at her, and she felt another blush rising. Trying to conceal it, she moved a hand over her ear as though tucking away an errant strand of hair. There was none, of course; her braid was firmly in place. “You manage to make an impression, whatever it is. People either want to fight you or respect you.”

So far, so good… If they could just avoid the bad subjects…

“Is that why you’ve been avoiding me for the last few weeks?” she heard herself ask quietly.

…why, brain? What did I ever do to you?

He lowered his eyes, silently watching the grass ahead as they walked. In front, Rafe and the other students carried on their banter; the voices washed over the two of them, finding no purchase.

“I wasn’t sure you’d want to hear from me,” he said finally. “After my best friend started a fight with you over nothing.”

Trissiny was so surprised she almost stopped walking; she did stumble slightly, hoping he didn’t make anything of it. Toby felt awkward? After being chewed out by Tellwyrn and then Avei, enduring jabs from Ruda and some sniping from Gabriel himself during their nightly dish-washing sessions, it had come to seem to her that everybody blamed her for what had happened. She didn’t quite know how to explain this to Toby, however.

“You mean, you don’t blame me for that?”

Well, that worked.

He looked up at her, startlement registering on his features. “What? No, of course not! I got the full report from Gabe himself; even he says it was his own stupid fault.” His eyes widened. “Oh, Triss, is that what you thought? I am so sorry, I didn’t mean to make you feel—that is, it didn’t occur to me you’d think…”

“It’s okay!” she said quickly. She actually was not sure whether it was, but he looked so upset. She hated to see him upset. “It’s, uh…actually kind of funny, I guess. We both thought the other was mad.”

This time, his laugh had a bitter undertone. “Some peacemaker I am. Well, I apologize anyway, Trissiny. I certainly didn’t want to add to your burdens. Especially after Gabriel did.”

“You’re not responsible for Gabriel.”

“I sort of am, though. I mean…no, technically, I’m not, but I feel that way. I’ve always kind of…looked out for him. Well, we did for each other. It really kills me that you guys don’t get along… He’s like a brother to me, and you’re one of the most admirable people I know.”

“People have to make their own mistakes,” she said vaguely. After not speaking with him for weeks, she did not want to talk about Gabriel Arquin. He really found her admirable?

“The thing is,” he went on quietly, “Gabe is… I think he’d be just about the best person I know if he would just think before acting, or opening his mouth. You really haven’t seen what’s he’s like, deep down. He works hard to do the right thing, and he’s a great guy to have your back. He’s just…well, a little reckless, I guess.”

“Being thoughtless isn’t a charming personality quirk on anyone,” she said stiffly. “For a half-demon, I’d say it qualifies as a real problem.” Did they really have to talk about this?

“You’re not wrong,” Toby said solemnly. “And I’m only just starting to realize that. He’s always been just Gabe to me. We grew up together, and…well, maybe I have a blind spot there. It never occurred to me before that he might actually hurt someone.”

Trissiny held her silence. She didn’t trust herself to say anything that wouldn’t offend him.

“GUYS!” Abruptly, Professor Rafe rushed over to them, scattering the other students in his abrupt change of course. His expression was even more maniacally gleeful than usual; Trissiny felt a sudden urge to kick him in the shin. “Guysguysguysguys! C’mere, come over here, you gotta see this!” So saying, he charged off to the left of the group.

“Onward to glory,” Toby muttered, and Trissiny shot him a grin.

Rafe left a trail of mashed tallgrass leading to a patch of leafy green stalks that towered over them. He skidded to a halt in before this, leaving the freshmen to meander in behind him. Flinging both arms wide, he actually hopped up and down twice in excitement. “BEHOLD! A wonder of the Golden Sea! A marvelous plant! A gift from the very gods themselves! CORN!”

For a moment, only the rustling of the breeze in the grass could be heard. A hawk cried in the distance.

“You rushed all the way over here to show us corn?” Gabriel said in disgust. He had moved more slowly than the others in responding to Rafe’s enthusiasm and now stood at the rear edge of the group.

“Hell yes I did!” Rafe crowed. “Corn is awesome.”

“Um,” said Teal, “this…this is cultivated. Look, it’s planted in neat rows. And the patch is almost square.”

“Isn’t it great?” their professor gushed. “Ooh, and it looks about ripe, too. Everybody grab an ear. You’ve never tasted corn till you’ve had it right off the stalk.”

“Or,” Ruda said loudly, “or, we all back the hell away and get outta here before whoever’s ballsy enough to farm in the Golden goddamn Sea comes back and finds us fucking around with their corn.”

“Uh, yeah,” Gabe said nervously. “About that…”

Everyone turned to look at him, and the group shied away as one.

An elf had appeared out of the tallgrass.

She wore simple buckskin shirt and trousers, bleached almost white and decorated with erratic, vertical streaks of brown and gold that blended seamlessly with the waving grasses. Similar markings were painted on her face, and dark strands were dyed through her honey-blonde hair. The camouflage was nearly perfect; even having stepped out of the grass into the cleared area around the cornfield, she seemed almost to fade into it.

The cleverness of her garb wasn’t what held their attention, however. In her right hand was a wand, the tip of which was pressed against Gabriel’s throat.

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