I desperately wanted to know more about that ominous reaction, but Char promptly decided that we had reached the end of conversation time, and Fallon was still too out of it to argue along with me.

  “You both need some sleep,” Char insisted. When I was insistent, they added, “Look. This is a conversation that requires your friend to be cognizant, and she’s… not, right now.”

  I looked at Fallon, and burnt myself a little on the worry for her I had been trying to keep carefully banked. She was still all but numb, deep in shock and barely responsive. “Are you sure she’ll feel better in the morning?” I asked Char quietly.

  “No,” they said in a whisper of their own. “But I’m hoping some safety, and sleep, and sustenance, will go a long way.”

  I nodded a vague agreement, and working together, the knight and I managed to chide Fallon into one of the flat bed cubbies. By then, Gellert had already flopped on another and apparently fallen asleep instantly, while Eni watched us with dark, worried eyes.

  There were no blankets to go around, but I found that I was able to conjure my cloak again, after a few moments' effort, even if it was still tattered and beaten to hell from the day’s misadventures. I used it to tuck the smaller girl in gently, and she curled up a little tighter underneath it.

  “I’ll take the first watch,” Char told Eni, once we had gotten Fallon laid down. The other ellid nodded, and neither of them had to say that Fal and I weren’t going to be in the watch rotation. Considering how heavy my eyes were starting to feel, I wasn’t prepared to argue about that.

  Still, I had one more small panic left in me, apparently. Reminded by our discussion about the class crystals, I groped around the voluminous pockets of my pants, and was startled to find that both the two remaining identity crystals, and even my supply crystal, were all gone. The only crystal I had left was the little disc-shaped one that let me see my menu.

  After I explained my panic to Char, they gave Eni an opaque look. The archer responded with an equally vague shrug before explaining, “The predators in this dungeon have some sort of crystal consumption power. When that one hit you before we showed up, it must’ve syphoned them away.”

  “It’s fine,” Char said, with what sounded vaguely like forced cheer. “You’ll be at Primevus soon, and you already have a class–that’s more than most applicants.”

  “Once you start moving up in level, you’ll get plenty of crystals,” Eni agreed. “Even leaving aside those you find in dungeons, the academy rewards some to high-performing students, and you’ll earn credits to buy more.”

  I frowned, somewhat mollified, but I couldn’t deny my nerves. While the ellids had been fairly open, and even informative, with us, they were clearly hiding some things too. They had gotten profoundly unnerved when they found out about Fallon’s class, and I was sure I had caught the fringes of another silent exchange when I brought up my crystals.

  But there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about my misgivings. While the trio were friendly–or at least, Char and Eni were–their display when they fought the shadow predator showed that they were powerful, far, far, beyond Fallon and I and our impotent level one abilities. And it wasn’t like I could blame them for being cautious around us–if I went on a school trip that led to me finding an extinct animal or an alien or whatever humans were to them, I’d probably be pretty cautious with it too.

  And besides. At the end of the day, I owed them not just my life, but Fallon’s. It was hard to doubt someone’s good intent after they went out of their way to save you and your…friend?

  I frowned to myself, realizing that I wasn’t entirely sure what to call Fallon. So, instead of voicing any of my concerns, I just told them both, “Thank you. For…everything. I’m sorry if I didn’t say it earlier.”

  Char smiled, but so did Eni, and her warm, genuine smile sent a little shock running through me. She had a good smile.

  “It’s our duty,” Char said simply.

  Eni chucked them on the shoulder. “Learn to accept compliments, you big stiff,” she told them, sotto voice. Then she looked back at me with that same smile and said, “I’m happy we had the chance to meet, Dani. Now get some sleep–we’ll talk tomorrow.”

  I gave them each a small nod, and made my way to the sleep surface closest to where we had laid Fallon to rest. I planned to try to stay awake just a little longer, to see if I could catch whatever Charrin and Enila would no doubt discuss once they thought we were both asleep. But the moss was soft, and surprisingly warm, and once I closed my eyes, I was asleep almost instantly.

  #

  I woke up all of three seconds later, to a hand gently jostling me.

  I’d like to say I blinked blearily and mumbled through a demand of who dared to trespass on my dreams, but remember, this was after at least two days of wandering through the tunnels of this dungeon.

  Adrenaline shot through me and I jumped up while trying to, at the same time, get my feet under me, reach for a dagger I didn’t have conjured, and escape from whatever was trying to kill or eat me.

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  The “whatever” in question turned out to be a wide-eyed, muss-haired Fallon. She lifted her hands, trying to signal her harmlessness, and shook her head in tiny little twitches. “Don't’! Don’t! I’m sorry!” she protested in hurried whispers.

  Slowly, my body relaxed, and I settled back down to my weird little moss bed. As the adrenaline receded, the drowsiness immediately began to creep back in, and a yawn forced itself out of me before I could say much of anything.

  Despite the fact that I was sure I had fallen asleep mere seconds ago, the fire had burnt down to flickering cinders, and both Eni and Char were sound asleep. Gellert, instead, was crouched on his haunches at the entrance of the camp. The commotion I caused by waking up and Fallon’s whispered apology had gotten little more reaction from him than an absently flicked ear.

  “”I’m sorry!” Fallon said again. “I just… I needed to talk to you.”

  I had to stifle another yawn, pushing it into the back of my hand, before I responded, “So you’re using whole sentences again?”

  Fallon blushed a little, which I hadn’t seen her do very often. She was good at it. It went all the way out to the tips of her ears, which were rounded and normal-shaped. A tiny bit of familiar comfort, after meeting the uncanny ellids. “I’m sorry about that, too. I needed to think for a little.”

  “And this thinking led you to a conclusion so important that you had to wake me out of the first good sleep I’ve gotten since we got hit by a bus?”

  Actually, I remembered, I slept like crap the night before that, too. I was too nervous about classes. And before that was… Right, I was trying to finish a game. And there was that MMO grind before that…

  Okay. So it had been a long time since I had gotten any good sleep. So please excuse how rudely I was treating my only real friend in this entire world. She had declared herself my mortal enemy the moment she woke me up.

  “Yes,” she said simply. “I don’t know if we’re gonna get the chance to talk, just us, for a while. Not till after things get settled at Primevus, and who knows how long that could take?”

  Half my brain wanted to tell her to shut up and go to sleep, that we could talk in the morning, but the other half stabbed the first one in the side, because it knew she was probably right.

  “Okay, okay,” I admitted. I had to sling my arm over a third yawn, but I managed to give her a feeble nod. “So you’ve been thinking, instead of sleeping or, before that, talking. What have you decided then?”

  “I’ve decided…” Fallon took a deep breath, and whether it was out of nerves or some perverse need to draw this conversation out for as long as she could, I wasn’t sure. “I like it here.”

  “You like it here.” I repeated the words flatly, as an echo, not a question.

  “I do,” Fallon confirmed anyway.

  “You like this world that we’ve never actually seen, because… why, exactly?”

  Let me be clear, I was not saying she was wrong to feel that way, but I personally was still reserving judgement. The magic crystals and being able to conjure stuff was neat, don’t get me wrong, but getting trapped in a labyrinth with a whole ecosystem of shadow monsters that wanted to eat me was a bit of a ding on the whole experience. Also, we had yet to see the world itself, outside of this weird damned dungeon.

  “I don’t know. Magic. Fantasy. Monsters. And apparently, we’re going to go to a school to learn about it all?”

  “Seriously? You’re excited about magic school?”

  “Are you saying you aren’t?”

  “Boy wizard, I am not.”

  Fallon gave me that flat glare she was so good at, the one that only my best jokes drew out of her. It made me smile, despite my sleepiness.

  “Dani, what were you going to school for?”

  “What?”

  “We were both at Coastside,” she reminded me, as if I must’ve forgotten. “What was your major?”

  I scowled, and shrugged a little. I didn’t want to think about it. “Education,” I told her, saying it in the same tone a child would use to describe broccoli. “You?”

  “I hadn’t even gotten that far,” Fallon told me. “I enrolled as general studies.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “I couldn’t pick a major because they were all so boring. I couldn’t imagine picking one of them to be the rest of my life.”

  I dipped my chin. “Sure. I can get that.” A similar train of thought had led me to education. I had decided it was the best choice out of a bunch of bad options.

  “Well now, we get to major in cleric, and rogue. C’mon Dani, you can’t tell me that isn’t better, right?”

  I frowned at her. She had a point, but still. I had gone to another world, just to end up enrolled in school again?

  But I knew that answer would be a whole thing, so I just said, “If I agree, can I go back to sleep?” Fallon gave me one of those glares again, and I waved a hand at her face like the expression was an annoying bug. “Fine, fine, it’s better, okay? And I guess optimism is an improvement over you going all catatonic.”

  Fallon smiled, and I had to look away.

  “Okay,” she said. “Thanks for hearing me out. Now scooch over.”

  “What?”

  “Scooch!”

  Wide eyed, I scooched, and I laid back down, and Fallon promptly curled up against me and slung my coat over us. And I’d like to claim I did something, put an arm around her, kissed her, snuck a squeeze, something.

  But I didn’t. I took a deep breath of her hair, soaked in the smell of another world, and I was asleep again in moments.