Today's Earth date: October 23, 1991

Horcus keeps telling us that the cultists were equal to monsters, not people. I thought I believed that too. The two I killed, though, they didn't have the faces of monsters to me. One was young, too young. And the other reminded me of my grandfather.

Wilmond hasn't spoken, but Rathain agrees with Horcus. We beat the bad guys, and rescued the girl. She's deep in shock, hasn't said a word, and has barely moved since we found her.

But she's going home. For all the shit we went through, at least we did that good thing.

-The Journal of Laszlo the Paladin

***

"Lady Rebecca doesn't get many visitors," a house maid said, leading Wayne and Fergus through a beachside chateau. "The last of her family passed two decades ago, you see."

"Hopefully she doesn't mind talking to us," Wayne said.

The maid looked over her shoulder. "Talking?"

"Yes."

She frowned and continued walking. "Lady Rebecca doesn't speak. Hasn't in the twenty years I've served her."

"Really?" Fergus asked.

"It's very sad, but I feel like she's still in there. If we go out to the gardens on a sunny day, she smiles. Sometimes when you're speaking to her, she'll look at you."

"I don't intend to be rude in asking this," Fergus said, delicately, "but what happened to make her this way?"

"I'm told she's been like this since the Chosen Heroes rescued her."

Wayne and Fergus exchanged glances. From talking with the druid in the Wheel Mountain, they knew that describing Rebecca's recovery as a rescue was a bent truth. According to the druid, she was never kidnapped in the first place and was forced to return to Cuan when the Heroes fought their way to her.

Wayne and Fergus found Rebecca on a patio, her wooden wheelchair pointed at the water. According to the known timeline, she would be in her 70s now.

Seeing her reminded Wayne of seeing his grandmother in her nursing home. She had Alzheimer's, and his parents made him visit twice a week, holding his hand to drag him through the halls to his grandmother's room. Along the way, they passed residents in every stage of the disease. He'd see two ladies on the couch watching television, having a mostly coherent conversation, but if he looked back at them too long, he'd walk into a man parked in the hallway, his head leaning to one side with his eyes empty.

The woman before him now was more shriveled and frail than any of the patients he saw then. Had he not known her story, he would have guessed her to be in her hundreds.

"Lady Rebecca," the maid said gently, "these are the scholars who wanted to speak with you. They came all the way from the Capital, if you can believe that."

Rebecca didn't move and showed no sign of having heard the maid speak.

"I like to think she can hear us," the maid said, "so I try to talk to her as much as I can. I'd want someone to do that for me."

Fergus agreed that was a pleasant thought indeed.

The scholars pulled a pair of chairs over to Rebecca and sat in front of her, but not so much in front that they blocked her view. The maid was adamant about Rebecca's love for the ocean and didn't want to take any of that joy away from her, even for a brief conversation.

Fergus cleared his throat and softened his voice. "Good morning, Lady Rebecca. I'm Fergus and this is Wayne. I hope you don't mind the interruption."

Wayne simply listened. He spent hours watching his father talk to his grandmother like this. She'd go on about what her son was doing–not recognizing that he sat next to her–and then dip into a memory from her childhood as if it were the present, talking about an old boyfriend or the pet pony her neighbors had.

He was always encouraged to talk to her the way his dad did, but he couldn't do it. At the time, he couldn't articulate why. When Wayne got older, he saw it more clearly: Speaking with his grandmother was like carrying both sides of an imaginary conversation. That felt too much like ignoring the reality in the bed in front of him, a strange flavor of futility underlying the play-acting of speaking to a person in end-stage Alzheimer's.

He knew that was wrong, because if there was a chance someone you loved could hear you, of course you should try to bring them any comfort you can. If you feel silly doing it, so be it.

Wayne believed that, truly, but still couldn't do it.

Rebecca didn't respond to Fergus. She didn't move at all, actually, not even her eyes.

"We came here to ask you about your life," Fergus continued. "We heard about you and Julian, and I'm very sorry for how you were treated. That wasn't right. You deserved the chance to live your life how you wanted to just like anyone else."

The maid stepped forward and gently dabbed a drop of drool forming at the corner of Rebecca's mouth.

"We're learning the truth of your story, and I thought you might like to know that. We have so many questions for you, but since you can't answer, I do hope you are able to listen. Maybe there is solace in knowing that someone cares about the truth, even after fifty some years."

Fergus sat quietly in front of Rebecca for several more minutes, as if she might speak again simply because he waited patiently. Every passing second made Wayne more uncomfortable. Visiting a nursing home was like walking through a waiting room for the dead. The lives of these people were functionally over, but they had to wait their turn and just sit for years and years.

He had that feeling here too.

"Well, Lady Rebecca, we should be going." Fergus stood. "Thank you for meeting with us today."

***

"Of all the things that come with growing old, losing my mind scares me the most," Fergus said. "There's nothing worthwhile after that. You're not you anymore."

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He and Wayne sat on Outlawson while the rest of the party relaxed in the wagon behind them. Everyone–including Sammy the cook and their new campmaster Einrig–were asleep, with the exception of Margo. She leaned back, her hands behind her head, and enjoyed the blue sky.

When Wayne didn't reply, Fergus asked, "Are you tired of me rambling on about this? I don't mean to belabor our visit with Lady Rebecca."

"I don't mind listening, but I don't have anything to add. I've been afraid of going out like that since I was a kid."

"Do you think it will matter to her when we publish the truth?"

"What truth?"

"About what actually happened."

Wayne believed what the druid told them. He wasn't ready, however, to treat that version of events as the de facto truth. Both sides seemed to believe they were fully in the right, and in his experience, the real story was usually somewhere in the middle. That somewhere might lean more toward one version than another, but Wayne was skeptical of bias and hidden motives on both sides.

Fergus acknowledged the point. "I think I'd like the druid version to be true. At least Lady Rebecca got to experience love in that story."

Wayne agreed that would be comforting.

Fergus changed the subject after a sad silence stretched for too long. "If it took the Heroes nine days to clear the Water Temple when it was full of demons, how long will it take you to do it solo with no demons?"

"Depends on how much there is to look at," Wayne answered. "I've not seen many Hero accounts where they stopped to appreciate the scenery. Who knows what they missed?"

"I'm looking forward to reading your notes. Second best thing to being inside."

Wayne asked if Fergus had any specific requests, anything he'd like Wayne to pay extra attention to. In his mind, he had a prediction for what Fergus would say.

The old scholar rubbed his chin. "The crystal, but that goes without saying. Four cycles ago, Artem the Rogue wrote about how beautiful the west fountain sculptures were."

"And then wrote nothing about what it looked like."

Being a Royal Scholar helped Wayne to be well read, but he remembered that part of Hero history more so because Fergus complained about it at least once a month. The old scholar once went nine weeks without bemoaning how inconsiderate that jackass Artem was. Wayne knew that was the record because he started keeping track.

Fergus did not appreciate the data.

"What if I skip that part?" Wayne asked.

"Don't do that to me. Not now."

Wayne grinned.

***

Einrig was all of nineteen years old and hadn't started shaving yet. He had the most average of builds and wore a look of permanent disbelief. Margo said it was like the face of a man witnessing a live birth for the first time. Wayne wouldn't have described it like that, but once she pointed it out, that was all he saw.

This was their new campmaster.

However, campmaster was not an appropriate job title for Einrig. Thirty minutes into him struggling to set up the fire for Sammy to cook, Wayne was certain there was no mastery in this camp.

"How did you meet Einrig again?" Wayne quietly asked Fergus.

"I never said."

"Okay, for the first time, how did you meet Einrig?"

Fergus didn't answer.

That made Wayne more curious. He pressed.

"Give him some time to adjust it. He needs a bit of practice, sure, but he has potential."

"Did you adopt him or something?" Wayne asked.

Fergus scowled.

"Alright, alright." Wayne surrendered.

Armond took pity on Einig and stepped in to show the boy how he was taught to do it in the military.

Dinner might be a while, but at least the view was nice.

The Water Temple was on a windswept plain at the top of a bluff, ocean crashing against the black rocks below. The nearest forest was a small green worm at the edge of a wide open field. The golden grass was waist high, but the constant wind folded it flat to the ground. With the wind always blowing, it was like the grass breathed in and out, rising and falling again and again.

For some reason, Wayne always pictured the Water Temple as being all blue, but the structure was matte black, the same black as the rocks surrounding it, and had the layered pyramid shape of a ziggurat and the size of a small mountain. The recesses of the structure were bordered with sapphire, as if the lines running up and over each arch were cut from a singular stone.

The entrance to the structure was halfway up. Two staircases rose from either side, meeting at a landing in front of that door, which was inset at the end of a brief tunnel.

The next morning, Wayne and Fergus climbed those stairs. Fergus insisted that seeing Wayne off was the polite thing to do, but a third of the way up, the old scholar expressed his regret for having manners and decorum. Wayne offered to carry him. Fergus gave him the finger.

At the top, after an appropriate amount of rest, Fergus took in the entrance with the proper attention it deserved. The opening was the size of the Cuan main gate and built from the same stone as the Temple walls. Though it was recessed into the building by ten yards or so, the door gleamed as if in direct sunlight. A mosaic of blues depicted the Chosen Heroes at the bottom, bracing to face demons descending from above. Fergus was quite taken by it.

"Of anyone I know, I'm glad you're the scholar that gets to go in," Fergus said, a rare moment where his voice didn't have the lift of a jester rolling across the room, balancing on a moving ball.

"Why is that?"

"I know you'll appreciate how lucky you are. I'd hate to live the rest of my life knowing someone wasted that."

Wayne clapped him on the back. "What happens if you try to get in?"

"What's a door for you is a wall for me."

"No zaps or anything?"

Fergus laughed. "Nope. I can't move beyond a certain point. Simple as that."

"At least come get a closer look at the door," Wayne said.

"Border starts right here. Can't get much closer."

Wayne thought for a moment. "I read the barrier started at the door itself."

"You read wrong."

"I don't think I did," Wayne replied.

"I will bet you any amount of money and shame."

Wayne sighed. "Okay, fine. I would have said the line starts there by your definition, but you already stepped beyond that point."

Fergus shook his head. "No, it would start here, the inside edge of the arch, not the outside edge."

"Why would it be laid out like that?"

"Look, it's right–" Fergus put a hand up to lean into the barrier, to prove he was definitively correct, but he never touched anything but air.

Wayne laughed. "Well, well, well." He strode confidently toward the door, his arm around Fergus. "Let the record show that the barrier starts immediately in front of the door, right here."

The line Wayne pointed to would keep Fergus about an inch from the door. This was the final cutoff point where the Heroes had to go the rest of the way alone. Six kids from Earth chosen to save a world, striding confidently into battle.

Fergus' hand touched the door. No barrier.

Now the scholars were equally baffled.

Wayne gripped the iron rings set into the door for handles.

Urg.

The doors swung smoothly as they opened. The hinges groaned, and a burst of cool air escaped like the temple. On the other side of the doors, a bridge bisected a waterway below. The stream flowed in both directions, as if fed by an unseen source directly under the bridge. At the edge of the darkness, at either end of the waterway, the water went over a fall, creating permanent mist.

The end of the bridge transitioned into an enclosed hallway lined with fountains, leading to another door covered in mosaic.

Fergus made it all the way to that door without encountering a barrier. At any point.

"Welp," Wayne said. "This isn't how it's supposed to happen at all."

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