Hearn pants, lying on his back on the forest floor. He has his eyes closed tightly, arms spread wide to the sides. "I can't believe we all got down," he says.

Finna scoffs. "It's almost like you've never climbed a tree."

Rworg laughs, and I can't hold back snickering either. The Monolith rises next to us. I walk around it and find the embers of our campfire are still warm. The bear carcass sits to the side. Only a couple of hours must have passed since we passed through here and entered the Monolith.

I shake my head in disbelief, taking out my knife. Never look a gift horse in the mouth. We've eaten enough hardtack to last two lifetimes.

There's enough left of the bear to feed us five times over. Rworg collects more wood as Finna lights the fire. Hearn mostly just watches over Lirn.

Finna watches me look at the two white men, one wizened and solemn, the other brand new and smiling like a baby. "Pretty sad," she says.

"Neither of them is going home," I say, cutting off another piece of meat. "Imagine some people turning up, taking you on their quest, and then getting lost forever."

"Yeah, imagine."

We both chuckle, quietly.

"You think he'll ever find back home?" she asks.

I shake my head. I've thought about it, tried to figure out some way back to Jonun, but it's no use. "The corridors are all flattened. There's no telling where the place really was. It could be below Kerthar, in the middle of a mountain or the bottom of the sea for all we know."

"The lost city," she says, gazing into the struggling fire. She leans closer to blow into it, the flames warbling and rising higher again. "When are we going to eat?"

"Once Rworg is back with more wood. I hope he finds something dry to burn."

"You know he went just so he could try to cut down a tree with his sword?"

I sigh, as I hear a massive tree falling somewhere in the forest.

The meat tastes better than anything. Hearn weeps, actually weeps, at the taste. Well, he has lived basically on mushrooms for his whole life.

"There, there," Rworg says, patting him on the back.

"It's just… too much," Hearn says. "The sky, the trees, the sounds."

I can relate. Not to being outside for the first time, but the general idea. It hasn't been more than two weeks since I've left the village. During that time, I haven't stopped nearly once. I've saved Velonea, perhaps the entire world. I'm going to have nightmares about the black speck of mana for as long as I live. What would have happened if we hadn't made it? If we had decided to tell Lictor that we've done our part?

I shudder. Cold shivers lift the hairs on my arms up. Would it have gobbled up the world? Would all the mana had been sucked in and what would have happened then?

But now it's all done. The fire crackles and Lirn belches loudly, looking surprised at the sound. What am I supposed to do now? Go home? Build traps for hares and spend the winter months whittling new arrow shafts?

Sit here, with nowhere to go? Nothing threatening to fry my brain, no one screaming and running at me, sword drawn.

"Friends," Rworg says, waving at us to look at him.

I twitch. Finna seems equally surprised, looking up from her hands, still sticky with grease.

"We carry on. The battle is won, but life continues," Rworg says.

I wait for him to continue, but he doesn't. The silence stretches.

Finna scoffs. She throws a small bone at Rworg. "What? That's it?"

The bone hits him in the shoulder, bouncing off. "Yes," he says.

I shake my head, a smile creeping on my lips. Maybe he's right. Maybe I don't need to have a solution or know how to feel at the moment. I will. Eventually.

And if old signs are anything to go by, a guide from Tenorsbridge will arrive soon, anyway. I wait to hear hooves slamming onto the path and see Lictor riding back at any moment.

We all sit in silence, for a long while. I keep my ears poised.

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Hearn breaks the silence by clearing his throat. "Um, what happens next? Are we waiting for something?"

"Oh," I say, twitching awake. "I was, sort of."

"You, as well?" Rworg says.

Finna chuckles. "You think they'll come and escort us back? Why would they bother?"

I dig out the pouch still hanging around my neck and swing it at Finna, dangling it from the string.

"Oh, ok. Good point," she says. "You could try throwing it into the forest as hard as you can. Someone would be here already."

"Haha, now that's a silly idea," I say, weighing the pouch in my hand. Idly, I slip the string over my head. Holding on to the knot at the end, it would be pretty easy to swing it around, slingshot the pouch and the Gem into the woods. Maybe that would be too easy to find. I could leave it hanging from my pocket, half-out. It could accidentally fall at some point of the trip, slipping out my pocket at some unknown part of the trip.

As if by design, I hear a horse approaching.

"Missed your chance," Finna says. "Your problem is that you're not decisive enough."

She says the final part, looking directly at me.

She holds my gaze, but I turn away to look at Hearn before I blush, before I know what to say. "Um, we were joking that if I would throw the Time Gem into the woods, Tenorsbridge would learn that has happened and send someone to come escort us back to the city and collect the Gem before anything can happen to it. If it was lost, the elves could…"

I let my voice trail off as Hearn is smiling and giving me a look that makes me feel myself stupid. "Yes, I put it together myself," he says. "Even if it all sounds pretty implausible. Still, things being impossible does not really seem to apply with you people, does it?"

"You got there much faster than he ever did," Finna says, nodding her head at me.

"It is not fair to judge someone based on how they acted when they were not there," Rworg says, shaking his finger at Finna.

Finna groans and rolls her eyes. "I was so fed up with him in the beginning. Nearly as much as now."

"This one I don't understand. Some help?" Hearn says, looking from me to Rworg.

"I wasn't there, so Rworg can explain," I say, waving my hand at him. I stand up, and stretch my arms above my head. "I'll go see who they sent to fetch us."

Rworg starts to tell him about the first Rides they were on, but I walk away, leaving the circle of light and warmth behind. My belly is full, but I still don't know how to be. My adventure is done. I could explode out of relief, but at the same time, the tension has no place to go.

The sun is creeping down, falling behind the treetops. I sniff at the air, lush with the scents of nature, leaves, moss, dirt. Everything that I didn't realize was missing in the corridors. How long did we spend down there? Three days? A week? The mana sustaining us, making it unnecessary or keeping us from sleeping, makes it even harder to estimate how long it all took.

The thundering of hooves comes closer. A blue light twinkles through the trees, somewhere down the path.

We've told the scout to be quiet for more times than I can bother counting. The man introduced himself as Yarn and has tried time and time again to launch into declarations about the enormity of our task, the debt all of Velonea owes us for preventing the mana cataclysm from continuing. None of us seem interested, especially as he doesn't seem to know what actually happened. His words sound like they've been learned by heart. He's young and reminds me of Liam. Enthusiastic, and so young. Probably a bit older than me.

Finna walks, hands pushed deep into her pockets. She sneaks glances at me, and I to her, but neither says anything. I don't feel the least bit decisive. Not at all.

Rworg watches the nature, delighted at the trees, the birds, and the mild, pleasant air. He bellows about Velonean forests being pleasant and peaceful, causing a whole flock of birds to take flight and screech in panic.

Hearn leads Lirn, holding his hand all the while. They are all the family either of them have. The guide from Tenorsbridge tells him that he will be welcomed into the city and that the jonungaard are anxiously waiting for his arrival. That must feel like a meager consolation prize of leaving his home and his son and grandchildren behind. The route back was blocked, but it might already have been a thousand years since he left. We have no way to know if Jonun even survived. They might have starved to death before we even reached the top of the Monolith.

I can't stop the thought, so I try to distract myself. "So, um, what happened while we were gone?" I ask the scout. "How about if you start from the night when Kerthar attacked."

"That far?" Yarn asks. "I mean, it hasn't been that long, but a lot has happened. But I guess you would have been tied up here and missed all of that. Still had time to hear about Kerthar, though?"

Finna and I exchange glances.

Rworg barks a laugh. "That is the way it goes. Well, Yarn, tell us how things happened!"

"Well, as far as I understood…" he begins. The tale is vague, full of holes. He knows Kertharians are displaced into the future, but according to him, they all disappeared and will reappear 30 years later. All of Kerthar has been announced a forbidden zone. There's no mention of the Device, or us. He thinks that magic becoming unstable was because of a last, desperate attack by the Kertharians.

Yarn taps his nose with a wink. "The problems with the mana were explained to have been related to the spell that transported Kertharians into the future. All this business with the Monolith is very hush-hush. Please, I have to ask you to keep all this between you and us," he says, waving a hand toward the Monolith and the sky.

I glance up at the sky. It's dark, dotted by stars and unmarred by auroras, green haze or swirling mana.

Finna groans and sighs. "As long as you hold on to your end of the bargain."

Rworg grunts, a sound that vaguely sounds like an affirmation.

"I knew I could trust you," Yarn says, smiling widely. "They did say you would understand."

I chuckle. "I bet."

"Um, yes," he says. "I got pretty specific instructions, you see. They told me—"

"Yarn," Rworg says. "We are tired. We will travel in silence for a moment. Yes?"

The young man closes his mouth. Finna pats Rworg on the back.

We walk in silence. We see some buildings, burnt to the ground. Yarn looks like he's about to say something, but doesn't. He sighs.

The blackened timber reminds me of the farm that Lictor showed me, a lifetime, or two, ago. "I wonder where Lictor is?" I say, thinking out loud. "Why didn't he come to fetch us?"

Finna scoffs, wrinkling her nose like she smelled something disgusting.

Yarn, on the other hand, looks at me with eyes wide. He frowns, but then his mouth pulls into a grin. "Sir Lictor?" he says, smiling wide. "Haha, nice one!"

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