Lictor. I can't believe it, but there he is.

He is standing with both hands in his pockets, smiling sheepishly, sweat running down his face. His eyes are beady and his hair is thin, both equally dark. Finna lays on the ground, more still than a rock. A strand of her black hair sticks out, a gust of wind lifting it into the air the moment Lictor froze her. She's still, maybe for the first time since we've met.

Rworg winces, the huge gash in his leg finally catching up to him. The sides of his head and jaw, shaved clean when we started out, are covered by a thick short beard and hair. The beard makes him look even more ruggedly handsome, but under it he's pale, pained and sweating. He lowers himself down on the ground, weight only on his other leg and his hands.

"Ah," Lictor says and walks to his horse.

It stands and steams under a large dark green tree, muzzle shifting through the low underbrush, searching for something to eat. Its flanks still fall and rise heavily. Lictor pushed it hard to get here. He said he killed a horse to get here, but this one is going to make it.

He opens a flap on a saddlebag and pulls out a flask of blue glowing liquid. "I brought something for your leg. This is quite potent and should be enough to heal it completely."

Rworg shakes his head and raises his palm at Lictor, waving away the bottle. "My needs are secondary—"

"Rworg, she's frozen," I say gently. "Just take it. You're bleeding a lot."

Lictor pushes the bottle into Rworg's hands. "It wouldn't have worked. She is beyond such ordinary measures."

I watch as Rworg removes the bandages on the wound. Even he grimaces as he does, and I see the white of a bone peek out from the bottom of the wound. Mandollel really cut him deep. Rrowrg yanks the stopper off the bottle and dribbles the liquid on the wound.

There's nothing ordinary what happens. The liquid shines blue, brighter than any ambrosia I've seen. Rworg makes a surprised noise as his flesh starts knitting together. It makes a low sound, a hiss of a snake in the grass or of water about to boil. The liquid bleeds into the wound, filling it from the inside. The flesh slaps together and the wound closes like someone pulls on cords holding together a seam.

"Tickles," Rworg says.

The skin is smooth like a baby's cheek, the blood washed away by the ambrosia. Rworg tests moving the leg and muscles lump and flex under his skin, strong and tight. He stomps it couple of times on the ground and raises an eyebrow. "I am in your debt, Janitor," he says, rolling down his trouser leg.

"You are absolutely not," I say, pushing close to Lictor.

I've had a moment to think and I'm boiling over. We've spent a week in Kerthar, behind enemy lines, killing Kertharians and running from them one day after another. Mandollel is crazy, stricken by the same madness that took their whole nation, not to mention also frozen in time for 30 years. Finna is dead, though now also frozen, even if I don't know what good that is supposed to do. Velonea has been saved, the Kertharian threat ended, or at least postponed. Nothing makes sense. The device was activated and it worked, and at least half of the people sent on the suicide mission actually lived. Everything went according to plan, and nothing did. We won, but what did we gain?

I want to take it all out on him, but clench my fists hard and keep them pushed on my thighs. "Why are you here? What happened while we were gone? What is going on?"

"This is going to be a long explanation," Lictor says, backing away. "Any chance of something to eat? I've been riding for almost twenty hours." There are bags under his eyes and he keeps blinking, his eyes taking a moment longer to open than closing.

"No guarantees," I say. We haven't eaten in a day either, so it's actually not a bad idea. My stomach grumbles as I take a look around. I don't have my hopes up. Hunting isn't like walking into the garden and pulling up a carrot. The chance that there's anything worth eating around is low, and you need to get close enough while not scaring it, and…

I lean down to pick up my bow and shoot a single arrow into a nearby tree in a single motion. The arrow thunks and the grouse screeches, snippet of krrt sound before dropping from its branch. It lands heavily on the ground. A large male, enough for a meal for the three of us.

Lictor scratches his head. He tries to hold back a yawn, but can't help it. "I was hoping it would take a bit longer before I would need to create a fire, but I'm even more hungry than I am tired," he says around the yawning.

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I watch as he flicks his hand, shooting sputtering red and orange sparks from his fingers. "You really didn't know that was going to happen?"

Lictor clenches his fist tight, and blue light starts to glow around it. The light isn't stable, it flickers and ripples. He flexes his arm, and the light stabilizes, gathering around his hand. "I'm no longer a Janitor, Folke. I've had my run." He opens his fist and a flame shoots up from it. It roils in the air, twisting and spinning into a ball of fire. "I'll stabilize it in a moment. There is cookware in my saddlebags."

Dressing the bird doesn't take long. It's even larger than I thought. Different breed from the small grouse we have around our village. Maybe it's local to the area or maybe it also got lost when the auroras confused all the birds. I still think about the gull, wobbling along the path. Finna said it looked like it was drunk. The memory feels like a stab and I focus on preparing the meat, wrenching my thoughts away from the still form to the side. Lictor wrapped her into a blanket or a cloak or something. It feels like a respectful thing to do, but I also hate how she couldn't see anything and how it has to be stuffy under there, even if the thought makes no sense.

Lictor has a fire going. It burns above the ground, low blue flames flickering out from the air. He is massaging his temples again.

Rworg hasn't said a word all this time. I don't know how his relationship with Lictor is, except he did tell Lictor helped to save his tribe and for that he would have done anything in return. So probably Rworg thinks quite a bit higher about him than Finna or me do. He sits watching the fire hanging in the air, scrubbing the pan Lictor brought with chunk of lard. Mandollel's pot is stuck on his back, so it's lucky Lictor brought one.

It isn't lucky. All this has been prepared by someone, if not by him. What has been going on in Tenorsbridge? Are they spending decades preparing for single days? I pass the meat over to Rworg. "We have time to talk while the meat cooks. What has been going on here?"

Lictor sighs and presses a hand on his brow. He must really have a headache. "Kertharians who crossed the border have been defeated, but not before they burned and killed their way through the area. There probably aren't any stragglers left. You understand why."

I do. They wouldn't hide or escape even if it was obvious they would lose the battle. They would just throw themselves at anything not Kertharian, not someone suffering from the same madness, until they were killed. "What about Tenorsbridge? What were you doing?"

"What we could. Defending the border area became extremely difficult after the Etherthorn Weave was put in place. Years were spent each day, searching for a solutions and to make plans on how to best save people. Anxiously watching the skies over Kerthar, hoping every day, for uncountable times, that the spell would be finished. Yet it never was, not until today."

"And you, not-a-Janitor. What happened to you?" Rworg asks.

"What happens to anyone, eventually. The side effects got too bad, started to appear too frequently, so I was retired. I haven't been a Janitor for three days. It is no longer safe for me to use the Mountain Ride." Lictor's expression is a mix of emotions. There's a smile playing on his lips, which doesn't reach his eyes. He sighs, but his eyes are hard. Determined or angry, difficult to say.

I don't care, either way. Serves him right. "So, last night someone saw that the spell would be finished? And what happened to Mandollel and Finna, and then they sent you? You."

"Yes," he says, rubbing his eyes. "The information provided by what happened to Mandollel will be invaluable. He would be proud, and will be proud, once the solution is found and everyone returns."

It feels like vertigo, being sucked again into the world where the Mountain Ride exists. My thoughts pile on top of each other, stumbling over each other as I fall back to untangling the web of what has happened for each of us.

They have spent months riding horses to death just to interview us about what happened on the other side of the border. We have told them everything, even if we don't even know what we have told them. They have prepared Lictor for whatever we needed and briefed him on things we should hear.

We can just eat our meal and Lictor can tell us what they decided we should know. He's not a Janitor anymore, but he still has a script. One prepared for him by some new Janitor, a script he has been manipulated into believing and following.

"To think that it was a spell with vocal components, words acting as runes…" Lictor's eyes unfocus, but he shakes his head. "It required intimate knowledge of the language and ability to channel. Intention, understanding, and ability, for the madness to take hold. In Velonea, it would have ripped the country apart or more likely just died out quickly, as the few people susceptible would have been dealt with. But Kerthar… Kerthar it united in madness."

The head shake is a gesture I've done multiple times. Who learned it from whom? Did he watch me do it over hundreds of Rides and it stuck? Or… I stop the train of thought. I won't let myself get sucked into that world anymore. Seeing him is like having a wound in my mouth. Impossible to stop poking at it, even if every touch hurts. "Will it help? To find a cure?"

"It's much better than not knowing. Still, so far there hasn't been much progress, but now we have time. Thanks to you," Lictor says. He smells at the meat as it sizzles and pops on the fire.

I'm not sure if we still would need to be careful, but this fire creates no smoke either. The flame burns blue and steady, even if it zaps and sparks occasionally, shooting tiny blue sparks to ricochet off the pot hanging on the metal tripod. The flame radiates warmth like a real fire would and I stretch my hands out to warm them. "We can still help her? How is that possible?" I can't make myself say it, but she's dead. Simply and unambiguously.

Lictor warms his hands as well. He shivers, probably as the sweat is drying and cooling him down. "Normally, it wouldn't be. No matter how pure, ambrosia can't bring people back. But they believe she's not completely gone, not yet. And now she won't be, because of what I did."

"Enough vague assumptions," Rworg says. "What is it we can do?"

Lictor rubs his hands, sucking on his lips for a moment. "You need to mend what we have broken. Magic is bleeding out of the world, and with it, life." He pauses and points a finger at Finna, bundled up and still. "And while doing that, you can borrow some for her."

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