As the Vanguard rapidly rebuilt their forward base around him, Davon paid no attention to the noise. He even paid minimal attention to Lyla’s chiding. He simply stared at the pattern of blue light shining through his skin on his arms.

  Feeling was gradually returning. Ever so gently, he balled his hands into fists, then slowly relaxed them. He savored the dull ache spreading all the way up to his shoulders.

  For a terrifying moment, he’d thought he would never be able to use his arms again. The fear abated quickly as feeling returned to his limbs, but it left behind a mental haze Davon wasn’t used to.

  “… are you even listening?” Lyla’s voice broke through the fog clouding Davon’s mind. “Davon? Hello?”

  Davon looked up to find her glaring at him with a mix of fury and genuine concern.

  “Uh… yeah, sorry. I was…” Davon’s eyes darted around nervously, unable to meet Lyla’s gaze. “… distracted.”

  With a heavy sigh, Lyla knelt by the crate Davon was sitting on. “Let me see your arms.”

  “Go ahead.” Davon nodded towards his limbs. “I’d move them, but… frankly, I’m scared of what would happen.”

  Lyla examined Davon’s arms carefully, tracing a finger across the visible lines of energy which still marked his skin. Her expression remained neutral through the entire process. Behind her, Kai was pacing back and forth with his own arms tightly crossed.

  “You just couldn’t let anyone else have the glory, eh?” Standing, Lyla fetched her spellbook from somewhere underneath her cloak. “You don’t even realize how close to death you were, do you?”

  Davon blinked. “Uh, no, I can’t say I do.”

  “One more cast, Davon.” Lyla sat beside him on the crate and began flipping through pages in her spellbook. “One more, and you would’ve gone up in flames like a thunder-struck tree.”

  Kai stopped pacing. “I’m sorry, he would’ve WHAT?!”

  “He would’ve caught fire,” Lyla replied calmly, finally landing on the page she was looking for. “From the inside out.”

  Davon fell silent, not quite able to wrap his ahead around that.

  “It’s what happens when you pull too much energy through your body too quickly,” Lyla explained, her voice still bewilderingly calm. “I could go into details, but I doubt any of us want that right now.”

  “Yeah… no, thank you.” Kai shook his head and resumed his pacing.

  “And you know the worst part?” Lyla pointed to a page in her spellbook. “I can’t even help you with a healing spell. Filling you with MORE magic would make the condition worse.”

  “So I’m out of commission for now, then?” Davon asked, a pit opening in his stomach.

  “No, you’re through the worst of it. Give it a few hours, and you will be able to move your arms properly again.” Lyla patted Davon on the shoulder. “It’ll ache for days, though, and your ability to pull on magic will be limited.”

  Davon scowled. “As long as I can fight.”

  Lyla opened her mouth, then closed it. The trio settled into an uneasy quiet.

  Their rest didn’t last long. Only a few minutes later, the gathering bell echoed through the hastily constructed camp. With a sigh, Davon pushed himself up onto his feet.

  When the team arrived at the new command tent, Davon noted how much smaller the crowd was. Roughly a quarter of their forces had been lost in the day’s fighting, and the rest had taken a hit to their morale. There would be no celebration of today’s victory.

  Grant’s voice was unusually subdued as he addressed the gathered Revenants.

  “Brothers and sisters in arms. Today has been both a victory, and a humbling defeat. We have secured a more advantageous position for pushing into enemy territory… but our losses were great.”

  He paused, bowing his head. The crowd stayed silent.

  After a moment, Grant looked up and raised an arm to indicate the magically grown camp walls. “For now, we will hold our position here, focused on defense, while waiting on the second wave of reinforcements to arrive. In the meantime, we will reevaluate our strategies, beginning with priority targets.”

  Emma took over, her tone a tad sharper than usual. “There are still many targets outside the walls we can strike to weaken our enemy's position. We will be picking out teams to deploy to these targets, so expect to see some assignments by day’s end.”

  Her keen gaze swept over the crowd, and then she nodded curtly. “That is all. Dismissed.”

  The Revenants dispersed instantly. Splitting off from the crowd, the trio found their way to their newly assigned tent. Davon walked up to his usual sitting corner and reflexively tried to take his bow off his back. Then he winced in pain and frustration, realizing he couldn’t bend his arm more than a few degrees.

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  “Hey, Kai, could you…?” Davon asked, pointing to his bow with a jerk of the head. “Please.”

  Wordlessly, Kai pulled Davon’s bow out of the half-holster on his back and placed it against Davon’s chair.

  “Thanks,” Davon mumbled as he slumped into his seat.

  Almost as soon as Davon sat down, the day’s fatigue caught up with him. His entire body started aching, down to the bone, causing him to shift uncomfortably in his chair.

  “Think we’ll be chosen to hit a target?” Davon asked, still trying to find a semblance of comfort in his seat.

  Lyla lowered herself into her own chair with an exasperated sigh. “As much as I hope not, we probably will be.”

  “Yeah, they seem to enjoy sending us on the sneaky missions,” Kai grumbled, pacing as he unwrapped the bandages around his arm. “But, as long as we get to kill some Crimson Reavers, I’m happy.”

  A brief silence ensued as Davon considered his teammates. Kai had been acting completely normal since the combat ended. Maybe a bit more pacing than Davon was used to seeing from the young warrior, but nothing worrisome.

  Lyla, on the other hand, seemed to be stuck on something. She usually spent every spare moment writing things into either her spellbook or one of her notebooks. Now, she kept pulling a book out, placing her quill against the paper, and then remaining motionless for several minutes at a time.

  Growing concern crept into Davon’s mind after watching a few rounds of this.

  Lyla never runs out of ideas, he thought as she began anxiously bouncing her leg, her quill resting against an empty page.

  “Did either of you see that Duelist Captain today?” Kai’s voice interrupted Davon’s train of thought. “I find it strange that she wasn’t involved in the fight.”

  “I did, actually,” Davon replied, leaning forward in his chair. “She was… in the distance, by the city walls. Left as soon as the Crimson Reavers started retreating.”

  Kai raised an eyebrow. “She just… left? Again?”

  Davon simply nodded.

  “I don’t like that one,” Kai stated as he finished unwrapping the bandages around his arms. He threw himself into his chair with a frown. “She’s plotting something.”

  Davon nodded again in silent agreement. Then he leaned back into his own chair, moving his arms with agonizing slowness until they were crossed over his chest.

  A few hours passed in relative peace as the trio rested. More and more feeling was coming back into Davon’s arms. Just as he was testing his range of motion, the tent’s silence was broken by Grant’s voice coming from just outside.

  “I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” Grant called, just loud enough to be heard. “May I come in?”

  “Of course,” Kai responded, jumping up from his seat.

  Chunks of snow fell off the old Revenant’s boots as he stomped through the tent flap. Even hunched over to fit, he still took up an imposing chunk of space in the tent.

  “I come with your assignment,” Grant said gruffly. “You are to hit a forge on Heinburg’s outskirts, just inside the walls.”

  Davon shared a concerned look with his companions. He knew all three of them were apprehensive at the idea of stepping inside the city walls again.

  “A quick in and out. Ideally, you don’t even get spotted,” Grant explained. “You’ll be given some explosives to use. When you’re ready, go see Taz at the Boneshaper’s tent. Any questions?”

  “How long do we have for this?” Davon asked, thinking nervously of his mostly useless limbs.

  Grant looked down at Davon’s arms. “There’s no rush, if that’s what you're wondering. We won’t be making another significant push until those who died today resurrect, so you’ll have time to recover.”

  Relief washed over Davon at those words, and he nodded at the old Revenant.

  “Anything else?” Grant waited for a few moments, looking among the three. “No? Good. I’ll leave you to your rest, then.”

  Uneasy silence filled the tent upon the old Revenant’s departure. The tension in the air was palpable. No one wanted to say what everyone was thinking.

  Finally, Davon sighed. “Well, no use beating around the bush, eh? We’re going to need a solid escape plan for this."

  “What about the entry plan?” Kai asked, a look of confusion plastered on his face.

  “Same as last time,” Davon replied, subconsciously rubbing his forearms. “I Shadow-step up, throw down some rope, and we’re in.”

  Lyla’s eyes flashed fiercely. “Do you really intend to pull from your Reliquary in that state?”

  “Of course not. We’re going to rest up first, properly.” Davon gave Lyla a reassuring smile. “But, back to the problem at hand. How do we escape once Tenebris hears the explosion?”

  “We could just hide,” Lyla offered, turning her eyes back to her book. “We hid from him once. We can do it again.”

  “Or, we could ask… Taz? To extend the fuses on the explosives,” Kai suggested, rubbing his chin. “Set the explosives and run, hopefully be far away by the time they blow.”

  “Too much risk there,” Lyla objected. “What if some Crimson Reavers spot the explosives after we run?”

  “Maybe we could set the explosives off from a distance?” Davon mused, wondering if he could muster up some sort of fire rune. “With a burning arrow, or something similar?”

  Lyla shook her head. “That still leaves us open to having the explosives discovered.” She glanced up from her book long enough to roll her eyes. “If only we could bring a ballista with us, we could tie the explosive to the bolt.”

  While he knew Lyla was joking, Davon’s mind ran with the possibility. “That could work.”

  “And how, pray tell, do you plan to bring a ballista into the city?” Lyla asked, narrowing her eyes at Davon. “Kai may be strong, but he’s not that strong.”

  “Grant mentioned this forge was on the outskirts.” Davon reflexively gestured with his hands as he spoke, then grimaced as the movement sent aching ripples through his arms. “If it’s in view of the ramparts, we could turn Heinburg’s ballistae towards it.”

  “Not to burst your bubble, but ballistae don’t turn that far on their mounts,” Kai explained. “Also, that’s a pretty big if.”

  “Think of it as a ‘just in case.’ A possibility to make our lives easier,” Davon countered. “And besides, you mean to tell me you couldn't rip one of those things off of its mount?”

  Kai scoffed. “Is that a challenge?”

  “That’s up to you, Kai,” Davon prodded playfully.

  “That’s a challenge.” Kai nodded with a smile on his face, provoking another eye roll from Lyra.

  Davon chuckled. “Regardless, we can think about this more in the morning.” His eyes fell on his bedroll, and weariness settled over him like a cloak. “For now, let’s get some rest.”

  His companions nodded. Without another word, the trio of Revenants settled into their bedrolls, and silence claimed the tent yet again.

  Despite his exhaustion, though, it took some time for Davon to fall sleep. In the quiet, he realized that he couldn’t feel the connection between himself and his bow as strongly as he did before.

  Fighting down a wave of anxiety, Davon waited for sleep. Hopefully, the connection with his Reliquary would be restored through rest.