Before I even opened my eyes, before I even registered what bed I was in or the weighted bnket over me, my own mind flung the memory at me again. Serru crying my name, grabbing for the knife, falling. Dying.

  Every muscle ached, especially the ones in my upper back and shoulders and arms. I was sure my personal power indicator would be fshing red and constantly demanding Battery low, please recharge.

  I still curled into the tightest ball I could as I felt the sobs forcing their way up, closing my throat. I wasn’t sure that a pillow would be much good to muffle it—but the long pink hair I found on it did no good at all for how I was feeling. I felt a small body unch itself hastily off the bed, and was distantly sorry that I’d armed Myu.

  My fault.

  I heard feet on the stairs, heard Aryennos say my name anxiously, and felt weight on the edge of the bed.

  “It’s okay. You stopped it from being an effective raid. The festival’s ruined but everyone’s finding their friends and collecting their things and making pns to go home. Or their next pnned stop, for some of them. Compared to what every account ever of a raid by either of those two says, that’s just mind-boggling. You kept dozens of people from going through what Serru and my mom went through, and even more from having to know someone they love is going through that. Everything’s all right. Better than all right.”

  Or something close to that, anyway. I was missing sometimes several sylbles at a time that just failed to nd.

  It was hard to get the words out. “Happened at all because of me. And Serru...”

  “Serru died, and Terenei said it was bad and abrupt and violent. He was really upset by that. But you know she’s going to be back, right? We’ve told you that. Ohhh... Terenei said all those potions might make emotions feel more raw and out of control and it might be harder to process emotionally-loaded things. Is that what this is?”

  I didn’t have a reply. Maybe that was a kind of reply.

  “I don’t think it’s going to surprise you that I’ve managed to die. More than once, actually. It’s, well, it’s not anything anyone wants to do. You just find yourself in this cubical room, and it’s absolutely empty. There’s no door, no windows, no furniture, no sound, no colour, no variation in the light, no one else there. And you wait. Time is strange because you don’t get hungry or thirsty or tired or stiff, there’s just nothing to judge by. It’s unpleasant, sure. But then you wake up wherever you were born, no matter how far that is from where you died. That generally seems to take about a full cycle, give or take. It’s just a thing that happens. You die, which might hurt but then it stops really abruptly, then you go to an uncomfortable pce where boredom becomes practically a physical force and time stops existing, then you get better. Really. I promise. This is reliable, it’s coming from a primary source.”

  When I tried to measure that abstract against the brutality of sharp metal and too much blood, a punctured lung and an open wound allowing an infection to have direct bloodstream access, it was my memory that felt real, and death as the worst waiting room ever simply failed to compute. Or even compete.

  Aryennos sighed. “Either Terenei was underestimating how many potions or the cumutive effects of them, or there’s something we’re missing. I’m sorry I don’t understand. Maybe something isn’t communicating properly.”

  “It was my fault!”

  “From what Heket and Terenei described, Serru made a choice. I think maybe because she knew what would happen if she died but we have no idea how it would work for you. Maybe you’d die all the way like in your world. Or wake up back where she first found you, alone. Or something else. We just don’t know.”

  “Probably better all around if she hadn’t.”

  “Um, no. Then everyone you cured after that would be in the Moss Queen’s power, and more besides because it would have spread out of control. And that includes Serru and Terenei. Maybe not Heket and Myu, Heket had her mecha, and I was here in the house with my parents but that could still have gone wrong, but Thelsan and the others could have easily been overwhelmed. There is no way that she would have missed Serru and Terenei, and seriously, can you see Serru considering anything worse than that?”

  “None of it should have happened. Intentions don’t matter. I’m as destructive as those other two, just by being here.”

  “No, you are not. They are attacking you. You haven’t done anything to give them a reason, they just don’t like you for whatever reasons make sense to them but not to anyone else. As usual. Nathan, I thought I made this clear when I was giving you history. Maybe I failed. Those two have both been around for a very long time. The history about that jotun builder wandering around is from about a hundred and ten years ago. That’s long enough that no one alive remembers life before the Zombie King. The Moss Queen had been around longer than that already even when he showed up. They have been a basic fact of life literally for generations. Are you hearing me? This is important. Everyone knows that they’re always a risk. Everyone knows that there are things you can do to reduce the risk, and most of the time just being alert is enough, but absolute safety is always questionable. Did you notice that no one was particurly surprised by the Zombie King attacking the bridges along the Shallows? They do things sometimes, no one ever knows why but we just accept that they do and try to remember when they create massive inconvenience that they could be attacking people instead.”

  “They don’t come into settlements—except zombies after me. Or into rge groups, except mosslings after me!”

  “They rarely do these days, but that isn’t the same as never. One memorable festival about fifty years ago had zombies and mosslings both attack it. Honestly, I suspect now that those two were actually attacking each other and they chose it as the location because there were lots of people, with no doors to hide behind. Part of what wardens do is watch for signs, or listen for sightings, of mosslings or zombies near a settlement, and they have almost unlimited authority to do whatever they decide they need to do to protect everyone. Zombies and mosslings can’t die but you can keep people and livestock and pets out of their reach. People get cautious about anyone wearing too much concealing clothing, especially if they’re hiding their face. Older records say those two used to be more aggressive, and there are odd references to people being gone for longer than the current usually-one-year-never-more-than-two that we have now. And come to think of it, it’s particurly odd that both have the same time limit since they’re using such different methods. No one knows why they seriously reduced the raiding, but they’ve never stopped entirely. We didn’t need to learn the words ‘raid’ or ‘attack’ from you.”

  Well, that st was depressingly true.

  “We lose people to one or the other and we grieve for them and wait for them to come home and we do whatever we have to that will help them heal once they do. It’s the one thing that no one wants to talk about, except with the people they most love and trust, because no one wants to even think about it. Literally everyone has a family member or friend or someone else close to them who has lost a year or two to those two. But everyone recovers and keeps on living because those two can’t destroy everything that makes life good. We won’t let them. Serru stayed with her family for a while, and then went back to doing what she loves and spending extended time with the people she hadn’t seen, reconnecting and getting her feet back under her, and I guarantee, all those people, Terenei’s family and Jaelis and Zanshe and whoever else, were ready to do anything she needed for that. Just like my mom’s family and friends and co-workers were all waiting for her and did whatever she needed, and even though she was unsettled for a while, she wouldn’t let Dad leave the band and wouldn’t stop going with them when she can get away from teaching. We do our best to protect each other and we do our best to support people who get unlucky and we don’t let that make us do horrible things like build walls around settlements and figure out what weapons are and stop being friendly to strangers. Everyone will get over this raid, which failed in a way no raid has ever failed, and get back to their lives. And that includes Serru, as soon as she’s back. Which she might be already, you’ve been asleep a long time.”

  “That’s not right. That shouldn’t happen. Not here.”

  “No, it’s not, and it shouldn’t, but it’s the only really bad thing that we have to deal with. There are natural dangers if you’re outside settlements, obviously, but all the bad and dangerous things you’ve told us about in your world make that sound like a much, much more difficult pce just to get on with the good parts of your life, with fewer systems to effectively reduce the risk and damage. We only have those two, really. And they’re bad but we’ve had a long time to find ways to adapt around them.”

  “You need that Purification potion formu.”

  “We do. If you turn out to have it, we start spreading it everywhere. If it doesn’t work exactly that way for everyone else, it should at least give them something to start from, but didn’t Terenei say that as far as he can tell, you do basic potions more or less the way his grandfather does, you just get a shortcut on the final part?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then let’s hope you have that one, once we find that st ingredient for the upgrade. But right now, you should get up and eat something.”

  “I suppose. But Serru...”

  Aryennos stifled a sigh. “Nathan. Please. Try to take my word for this for the moment until we can prove it. All right? Serru is okay. I don’t think she’s going to like the memory of this particur death, but I have a couple I’d rather forget too, although at least mine were mostly embarrassing and didn’t involve bad intentions. But she’s either already home with her family or she will be very soon. You stopped the one thing she wanted least of all, and you were able to keep curing others which I bet she wanted you able to do, and that’s all that matters.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Only Myu is downstairs. Terenei went to the festival grounds post office to check for messages. Well, Heket sort of is, but she’s busy. People keep stopping by wanting to pass on their thanks and leaving you little gifts in appreciation. Uh... I’m afraid we had to just tell the truth about you being a newcomer. There were some very confused and inaccurate versions of events going around. A lot of people heard you arguing with the Moss Queen with some words no one understood, and saw you change to centaur, and, well, it got complicated. But no one has bad feelings towards you. Just respect and gratitude and some sympathy because those two don’t like you. When Myu came running downstairs, Heket stayed to keep dealing with that and suggested that I know you better. There is lots of food down in the kitchen, anyway.”

  I shrugged. If people knew, well, so what? I was tired of hiding. Besides, wasn’t that what they had both done? “All right. If anyone shows up to lock me up, I don’t think I’ll resist.”

  “No one is going to do that.”