Deep within the shadowy recesses of the mine beneath Mount Galfrei, Rya found herself confined in a sparsely furnished chamber, a relic of forgotten labor. Dietrich stood sentinel over her, his presence a constant reminder of her current predicament. The space was more of a hollow than a true room, closed off by three rugged walls of unrefined rock, while the fourth side was a makeshift barrier of stacked timber planks hastily assembled by miners long gone. The ceiling loomed low, forcing Dietrich to stoop slightly each time he navigated the cramped area, his broad shoulders brushing against the rough-hewn beams above.
The atmosphere was thick and heavy, saturated with the metallic tang of damp iron, a scent reminiscent of the earth's secrets waiting to be unearthed. Every now and then, a distant sound echoed through the stone, the slow, steady drip of water from above permeating the silence, creating a rhythm that felt almost like the mountain itself was counting down the moments.
Rya couldn't shake a sense of frustration layered with an unsettling dread. 'Great. I'm stuck in a room with this fucking guy,' she thought with a blend of irritation and resignation.
Dietrich, nonchalant and seemingly at ease in the oppressive ambiance, leaned against the timber wall, his war hammer resting heavily across his knees, a symbol of the brute strength he wielded. In his hands, a knife twisted idly around his fingers like a juggler, the blade glinting dully in the faint light filtering through the crevices, as he indulged in the fleeting pleasure of teasing Rya about her unfortunate situation. It had been roughly half an hour since they had been in the cramped confines, and Dietrich's thoughts drifted to the satisfaction of having emerged from his own earlier missteps… Now, with Rya at his mercy, he couldn't resist poking fun at her predicament, relishing this rare opportunity to reclaim a semblance of control.
"Haha. Oh, how you saved my ass, little miss slave. The only thing that would make this better is if I could have a little fun with you. You're lucky Jeremiah doesn't want you to be a sex slave," Dietrich said with a smirk on his face.
Rya growled at the man.
'God, I want to see my friends come in here and destroy you,' Rya thought as she tried to calm herself down.
"Oh? I know that look. Haha! You're imagining your friends coming in here and killing me in all sorts of ways, aren't you?" Dietrich said with a laugh.
Rya glared at the man.
He laughed some more, and the low ceiling gave it back to her twice.
Rya sighed and turned around, giving him the back of her head and a wall to talk to. 'Dammit! The only way this collar lets me hurt him is if he gets handsy, and this idiot won't lay a finger on me long enough to use it. Shit, how I wish he would come over here and try. Tch! Just thinking about it makes me sick to my stomach.'
"Dreaming about your prince coming in to behead me? Or maybe you wish for that old fart to come in and smash his shield into my face? To see my nose broken?... Haha. Maybe you're hoping that kid will shoot me with one of his arrows? Haha! Gods, it's fun seeing you pissed off like this," Dietrich said mockingly with a smirk on his face.
Rya didn't move or respond. The dripping filled up the space where her answer should have been.
He continued, "Oh yeah, maybe you want that mutt of yours to use—"
Dietrich stopped himself as a thought occurred to him.
The knife went still in his hand.
"Where did you find that mutt anyway?" Dietrich asked with a puzzled look on his face.
Rya remained silent.
For some reason, Dietrich found himself back in the goblin nest under the labyrinth, three steps behind Marcus with a lantern in his fist. The rows of posts. The smell that got into a man's beard and stayed a week. And the wolfkin chained at the end of a row, belly swollen tight as a drum, breath coming in short wet pulls. Marcus hadn't broken stride. Dietrich remembered stepping over her legs and not thinking about it again for a single hour since.
She had been three hours from dead. Maybe less.
'No. It can't be. That mutt couldn't have been the one from the goblin nest! She was impregnated! Unless—?'
The hammer slid off his knees and cracked against the stone floor. He left it where it fell. Dietrich stood and came closer, looking her over like a man counting a sum a second time because it had come out far too high.
He had already worked out that the dark elf was why the prince walked out of that labyrinth alive. Anyone with eyes could see that. He'd been on the line with the prince when the horde came through the doors, and he'd seen what she did to it. Walls of black stone coming up out of a flat floor with nothing to bring them, hobgoblins going into the ceiling like a boot through wet paper, one of them riding a slab twenty feet across the throne room with its legs still kicking. Dietrich had been paid to kill two mages in his life and had watched a dozen more work. None of them had ever done that. So he'd set her down in his head as a powerful earth mage, and left it there; the earth mage who kept Marcus's soft cousin breathing long enough to put the beast down. That much he understood. Mages he understood.
And he'd been the one to end it. His own hammer into the floor, the cracks running out from the blow, and the whole lot of them going down into the dark together; prince, elf, troll, and the Hobgoblin King still on its back. He hadn't stayed to watch. There'd been nothing to watch. Nobody walks away from a cave troll on the bottom floor of a labyrinth with a sword and a dead man's cousin for company.
They had, though.
But no earth mage alive emptied a womb and put the breath back into a dying wolfkin.
'She's a healer.'
The thought went through him like a swallow of strong liquor, warm the whole way down.
'Not a mage. A healer! That's how that worthless prince came out of the hole in one piece…she put him back together! And she had enough left over to save the mutt! FUCK!'
Dietrich stood there, his mouth slightly agape, grappling with a torrent of calculations that he had never before encountered in his life. The cold of the mine clung to him like a second skin, and he barely felt it; his mind was sharp and focused—forced into the realm of numbers and probabilities by a realization that felt both surreal and undeniably tangible.
In every mercenary camp scattered across the vast expanse of the continent, tales of the legendary healer circulated among the soldiers, each drunken telling morphing the story further. The narratives were as predictable as the dawn, revolving around the same enduring theme: every great empire had their own version of the tale. They all told of an orc chief from five centuries past—a fearsome warrior who, against all odds, forged a formidable path across three continents. Yet what made this chief's story legendary was not merely his strength or cunning; it was the presence of a beastkin healer, a woman of extraordinary capability, who rode behind him on the battlefield.
With her at his back, the chief gained an unimaginable advantage: when his men fell, they didn't remain fallen. Her skills had the power to pull them back from the clutches of death itself. That revelation was the crux of the stories—no amount of superior weaponry or sheer numerical advantage could compare to the mighty resolve of an army reinforced by a healer. Her mere existence turned losses into mere setbacks, allowing the chief to maintain his forces and strike fear into the hearts of his enemies.
Yet, for all their bravado, the tales never concluded with triumph and glory. As the night wore on and the campfire's flames flickered low, the laughter dwindled, leaving an unsettling silence that enveloped the group. It was at this moment, when sober reflections replaced drunken revelry, that each storyteller would inevitably circle back to the concluding note of the story.
Someone found the healer.
Every time. Without fail, someone always found the healer. The implication was stark and chilling—no army could hold on to such an advantage forever. Each chapter of the tale contained a grim reminder that, no matter how safe and hidden a healer might appear, their discovery was just a matter of time.
'Then nobody finds out,' Dietrich thought, and something behind his face came apart and set itself back down in a different shape. 'Not Jeremiah. Not Rudolf. Not one of these idiots. The second they know what she is, she stops being mine and starts being theirs.'
"D-Did you save the wolfkin?" Dietrich whispered as he got close to Rya.
She slowly turned to face him. Rya kept a calm demeanor, but her eyes showed surprise for the space of a single breath.
'Shit! He knows,' Rya thought.
It was enough. It was more than enough. Dietrich picked up on the fact that Rya was surprised, and he didn't bother to hide the grin that came up out of him.
'She's mine. All I have to do is get that tool off Jeremiah, and there's only one way a man gets a thing off another man that fast: put a blade through his back and take it out of his—'
The grin came off his face like it had been wiped away with a rag.
Nine royals. Nine kings and nobles in the ground by that man's hand, and not one soul alive could tell you how a single one of them had died. Dietrich had asked, once, back when he was new to the company and stupid enough to ask things. He'd gotten the answer everybody got. Nobody knows. Men go at the Kings Slayer, and men die, and afterward there's Jeremiah standing in the middle of it without a mark on him and nothing to tell. Ask twice, and the old hands stop drinking with you.
'Nobody has ever killed him.' The thought went down into Dietrich's gut and sat there like swallowed lead. 'Not one. Not with a blade, not with an arrow, not with a room full of men who'd made their peace with dying. And every last one of them was trying.'
He made himself breathe.
'...Trying.' The idea came to him slowly, the careful way a man puts his weight on ice. 'Every one of them was trying to kill him. Not one of them ever just took something off him and walked.'
'FUCK! FUCK! I should have worked this out in the labyrinth! If I had, I could have been emperor of the entire continent of Agon by now! That asshole won't give the tool up, and it never leaves his left hand! And no way Rudolf lets me anywhere near him with it! FUCK! This sucks! So I don't fight him for it, I take it off him while he's got his hands full with something worse than me. I have time. I just need an opening. Damn it all to hell!'
He turned away from her and started to pace. Four steps to the timber wall, four steps back, ducking the crossbeam each time without appearing to notice it was there.