At the end of the day, Runa found herself carried on the flood of villagers back to the tavern, half-listening to them sharing stories of near-misses with Cauldron wildlife. The later the night got, the more the stories grew. Runa felt sure she would have noticed a bog-mammoth harrying a young mother while she plucked solberries by a bottomless brook with her child strapped to her back. She would have helped to fight it off.

  Or maybe not. Maybe the slight human woman would have dealt with it herself, the same way Ninnius and Anklopher had apparently made their way out of the Cauldron without her.

  She felt strangely adrift. And at the end of the night, she washed ashore in the bakehouse again.

  Lying on the stone window seat, staring up at the trapdoor she didn’t fit through, she finally found the space and quiet she needed to take a hard look at her own thoughts.

  The Cauldron had been her life since she was sixteen. She’d ridden a curse from her father’s lands in the frozen north to the place where all curses ended up, and survived by the skin of her tusks. She hadn’t dared eat anything she found there. By the time she stumbled into Sollus Gate, she was worn to a nub, hungrier and more dehydrated than she’d imagined possible.

  And she’d known there was no world she could ever love more than the Cauldron that had just tried and failed to kill her.

  She’d fallen through the door of the Guides Guildhall. They’d fed her, watered her, and offered her a job. Over the next years, she spent more time in the Cauldron than she did outside it. She learned it the way any apprentice learned their trade. She made a life for herself, and it was a life she loved.

  She clenched her fists. That was still her life. Ninnius and Anklopher were home safe. That meant her contract was complete. Her perfect record remained unstained. She could stroll back into the Guildhall and pick up a new job before her foot hit the floorboards. Turn some starry-eyed idiot’s dream into reality without letting them get themselves killed. Help a wizard researcher uncover some mystery of the universe, and not let them get themselves killed, either.

  She would have the solidest excuse in the world for stepping into the Cauldron again.

  But if they didn’t really need her. If they could survive the Cauldron without her. If she wasn’t needed as a guide.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

  Then what else was there?

  She thought of the feeling of the shifting lands beneath her feet. The way she could read the Cauldron like an unruly beast. What if she could go beyond reading it? If she didn’t have clients to look after, maybe she could…

  She rolled over and groaned. Make a home in the Cauldron? Make a part of it hers? She wouldn’t be the first person to try that. And everyone knew how that ended up. The smoking ruins they left behind were favourite spots for new adventuring teams to visit.

  Anyway, she was no wizard. A wizard made the Cauldron, and it’d take a wizard to control it.

  Not that she wanted to control it.

  Just…

  She swore and banged her horns against the wall. Maybe what she needed right now was less space and quiet to listen to her own thoughts.

  She would go back to Sollus Gate. She would pick up another contract. She would take some na?ve travelers into the Cauldron, and keep them alive, because that was what she was good at, and even if two of the dumbest assholes she’d ever had the pleasure of hauling out of trouble by the back of their robes had apparently strolled out unharmed, that didn’t mean that everyone else would manage the same.

  Or she could stay here.

  The thought nudged into her mind and sat there, like one of the smarter ghouls playing dead and pretending it had been in your camp all along. Stay here. In Pothollow.

  Outside of the Cauldron, but on its doorstep. Close enough to keep an eye on it, close enough to charge in and haul whichever of the locals decided to get themselves into trouble out of it again. Guarding, not guiding. Was that enough?

  What did she mean, was that enough?

  Because that wasn’t the whole picture, was it?

  She was good at the Cauldron. She didn’t even think of herself as skilled at surviving there, because it came so naturally to her. People trusted her, worked with her, because she was good at it.

  But that was all.

  The people of Pothollow had welcomed her. She’d literally bashed two doors down on her way into town, and they’d sat her down and offered her dinner. They ambled up to her table when she was at the tavern, and talked to her, even when she was doing her best tough silent act.

  It wasn’t a purpose, like her life in the Cauldron. It was something new.

  Community.

  She shook her head. Community? They’d put up with her so far, sure. How long would that last?

  Besides. She didn’t need people. She was fine by herself. She was better off by herself, and so was everyone else. You didn't want people who were good at the most cursed place in the entire world on your doorstep, even if the next stop from the doorstep was that very cursed place.

  Maybe especially then.

  Stay in Pothollow?

  Not going to happen.

  Runa punched the sack she was using as a pillow into a different shape and lay back down. If she was going back into the Cauldron tomorrow, she needed a good night’s sleep tonight.

  Just as she was closing her eyes, a scream cut through the air.