"A colossal mass, no smaller than ten feet, produced a deafening roar that pierced through our eardrums! And the snout—never before have I—"

"Henry, it was only a digger. And once she realized we meant no harm, our encounter concluded with a friendly conversation."

Despite how he could still not make out facial expressions with echolocation, Henry would have bet Mys that Thanatos had rolled his eyes.

"Way to go, Death." He tore his gaze away from his audience of five wide-eyed mouse pups to glare at his bond. "I know it was a digger, but how am I to tell a story with nothing but cold, hard facts? Imagination! Ever heard of it?"

"Right." Thanatos rolled his eyes again. "Except they would tremble in awe anyway if you told them that you've faced a live digger. Would you not?"

The huddled-together pups at Henry's feet gawked at them with pink, agape-standing mouths, then nodded in unison.

"Even I was awe-struck when you first mentioned you had found live diggers."

Henry glanced up at the entrance to the nursery, from where Cevian emerged. "Is it not bedtime for them yet?" She moved closer, and her own three instantly clustered around her, the tiny gray Kepler soon clinging to her ear. "Everyone presumed the diggers went extinct after the humans arrived."

"No . . . Fortunately, they're not so easy to extinguish." Henry made a face. "And you must not dance around the truth; I am well aware that it was us humans who caused their near-extinction. Although they were far less vindictive than I expected."

"Did you not mention feeling that the one we conversed with seemed to anticipate vindictiveness from you for some reason?" Thanatos chimed in.

"Indeed, and I stand by that notion," said Henry. "She reacted to my expression of regret on behalf of my species rather oddly . . . I have no inkling why."

"At least they appear well enough," said Thanatos. In Cevian's direction, he continued, "They have territory north of Regalia. The colony we met consisted of six individuals, and they are not the only ones either."

"Hardy creatures, they are," mumbled Henry, plucking the creamy-white Prisma from Thanatos' wing. "Not particularly surprising, given their size and mass."

"How did you even converse with them?" asked Cevian. "I cannot imagine that they speak Human."

"The one we spoke with understood Nibbler," replied Henry with a grin. "I must thank your father for insisting that I—"

"What are the small ones still doing awake?" All heads pivoted toward the entrance from where Curie emerged. "Are you keeping them up with frightful stories again?" She took her heavily protesting daughter from Henry's hand and placed her into their nest, next to her brother Cone.

"It was they who pestered us for more stories!" proclaimed Henry with his hands on his hips.

"More! More! More!" all five chanted.

Curie and Cevian exchanged exasperated looks. "Later." Cevian pushed her own young into another nest, but Kepler hopped right through her front paws and darted toward Henry. "I made put!" he squeaked. "Sorry."

Henry identified what the young nibbler pulled out from under a pile of nest material as the broken halves of an ivory figurine. Kepler nudged it with his tiny paw and gazed up at him so remorsefully that Henry nearly broke into laughter.

"Worry not." He scooped him up in his hand. "I brought plenty of new ones, no?"

He had made it a habit to record the confrontations in the uncharted lands in this manner: for every new species he encountered, a new figurine had joined his collection. And so he had a replacement for every figurine the pups broke.

He had carved figurines and filled an entire notebook with logs, yet he hadn't made any attempts to systematically chart any land. You spent nearly five months out in the uncharted lands and bring me not a single map? Henry smiled, remembering Teslas' words upon their return a few weeks ago. Despite its potential usefulness, he had quickly declared that creating maps larger than one or two cave systems was incredibly tedious.

"The others let me not play with them." Kepler pulled himself up Henry's arm to attempt to hide in his fur collar. "They say I make everything put."

"Hey!" Henry gave the other pups a glare. "I say you share the figurines, or you won't receive any new ones."

They all ducked under his accusing look, and Henry gave Kepler a thumbs up. "They will share," he assured. "Lest you tell your parents—or their parents." Then Henry's gaze met his backpack, which he had left in a corner of the nursery. "Halt," he said, sprinting toward it, still with Kepler on his shoulder. "Perhaps there is something we can still do, even for this one."

***

"Aren't you glad we siphoned this vine extract after all?"

Henry shot Thanatos a glare before shifting his attention to the sparkling water of the spring to take aim. "You may stop rubbing it in at one point."

"I may not," said his bond conversationally, and Henry groaned. "It is . . . good to be back."

Before he could properly process the calculations his echolocation had attempted to provide for him about the trajectory and speed of his shot, Henry lowered his arm again. "It was good to have been gone." With a smile, he reminisced about the last four months and thought it had not felt like four months. It had felt like years—decades, considering how many wonders and impossibilities they had seen. Perils too, but Henry thought those were part of the package.

"If anything, we proved that your fears were unjustified," said Henry. "The land, uncharted or not, is not really any worse than the rest of the Underland. On the contrary," his grin widened, "it is a whole new world out there. But . . . fine, I concede." Henry gave Thanatos a side glance. "As good as it has been to be gone, it is also good to be back."

"You concede?" Thanatos laughed. "Since when do you concede?"

"Wait, no, I do not concede!" Henry pivoted around to him. "I did not mean it like—"

"You concede," repeated Thanatos with a mellow smile. "A historic day indeed."

"Be still!" hissed Henry, jerking his head away. "I am not one to concede."

"And yet you wished to return."

"So did you!"

"But I have no difficulties in conceding."

Henry shot him another glare, but he couldn't deny that, after four months in the unknown, he had woken up with an inexplicable feeling of homesickness. On that day, he and Thanatos had exchanged one look and one line: You miss them as well? They hadn't needed more. They had packed their things at once, and when Henry had caught sight of the outskirts of the waterway for the first time, he had almost shed tears of joy.

Well, perhaps "homesickness" didn't quite capture it—Henry finally positioned himself and took careful aim at a dangling vine on the edge of the clearing—since he had determined that "home" was more of a feeling than a location. Although he admitted that certain places still evoked a stronger sense of home for him.

Thanatos flinched as Henry's projectile narrowly missed him; it flew a nigh-perfect arch and neatly severed the hanging vine, then came flying back to be caught in Henry's outstretched hand. "Oh, what a marvel this thing is!"

"I'm guessing you were going to say, "If only I'd had it earlier"?"

"This is finally a range weapon that may kill a gnawer, as opposed to my slingshot." With a laugh, Henry twirled it. "But no, Teslas had to keep it "for later"."

"Perhaps it is unwise to make more than one gadget that takes some getting used to at the same time."

Henry made a face. "I suppose. But—"

"What is this thing again?" Thanatos asked, eyeing it skeptically.

"A projectile that, when thrown, returns to my hand . . . If I can figure out how to achieve this effect consistently." Henry weighed it in his hand, running his finger over the dull side of the outer blade. "Teslas calls it a "boomerang"—we fashioned it from leftovers from the meteorite. I shall get the hang of this eventually." Aiming once more, he attempted to replicate his previous throw, yet the boomerang veered off in a different direction this time.

"What think you? Should we stay here awhile longer?"

Henry shrugged, peeking into the dense vines for traces of his boomerang. "Honestly, I feel not like staying." He shrieked, dodging only thanks to his echolocation, when the boomerang unexpectedly shot out of the vines and toward his head before finally clanking against a nearby stone.

"Behead yourself not!" Thanatos made a face. "Have you not had enough adventures yet?"

"No. And you? Is it that you crave a vacation from our vacation?" Henry laughed, picking the boomerang out of the sand and dusting it off. "I thought we may go back to Splintleg and claim the bounty he owes us from our last battle."

"It was hardly a peaceful vacation," Thanatos grumbled as Henry settled beside him. "I thought you craved peace?"

"I craved . . . a kind of peace," said Henry, tossing the boomerang in the air a few times and catching it. "But if you crave more peace, I shall endure it for a while longer. Hey," he said suddenly, "what say you if we go see Kismet? We have not seen her since our return."

"I have missed her."

"So have I." Henry gave his flier a grin. "We have not yet shown her the saddle. She shall be awestruck."

"Oh no."

"Oh yes!" Henry kicked a load of sand toward him. "Recall you not the many occasions on which it saved our lives and you said—"

"No."

"You said," Henry continued undauntedly, "that even if you may only say it once, it is an invaluable and revolutionary gadget."

"I said . . ."

"You said!"

Thanatos groaned. "I have seldom regretted saying anything more. Would you finally stop rubbing this in?"

"Only when you admit that I am right."

Thanatos threw him the most defiant glare he could muster. "Fine," he hissed through clenched teeth. "Perhaps I said this. Perhaps it is true that it allows for never-before-seen stunts, and perhaps it has saved our lives. Perhaps it makes us unpredictable and far more adaptable in battle." He leaped to his feet, shaking his head so that the leather construct slid backward on his neck. "And perhaps it also itches like crazy!"

Henry broke into roaring laughter. "I see this as a victory."

"Don't you dare."

Henry rammed the tip of the boomerang into the sand, still grinning. "You cannot out-stubborn me," he said. "I have proven this time and time again."

"Stubbornness is not a competition."

"It may be." Henry crossed his arms, thinking he might as well make note of it on his ever-growing list of more or less useless competition ideas he had started collecting recently.

"I am not engaging in such a competition," said Thanatos.

"Then concede."

His flier's eyes sparked with defiance. Then, unexpectedly, he drew back and sighed. "I may concede eventually . . . only a fool would not concede to your infinite will. But not today."

"Concede not to my will but to the fact that it is everything I have promised you it would be," said Henry with a smile.

Thanatos shot him an exasperated look. "Fine, fine. I concede to that. Now, at last, get it off me! I will not sleep with it on."

Henry laughed again, tugging at his own footgear; he had nearly forgotten it was there. "Perhaps one day there will come a time when the two of us will be so used to this gear that we shall never take it off anymore."

"No. No, by all that you hold dear, no."

Before Henry could break with another laughing fit, the vine curtain moved, and both their heads flew around simultaneously.

"Ah, here you are," called Cevian.

Henry rose and opened his mouth to greet her when he spotted what she was holding. "This just arrived from the Fount, asking if we were willing to resume the supply deliveries. Mother was wondering whether you would take over this duty again."

Henry's gaze locked on the leather mailcase in her front paw, and he involuntarily took a step back. Hadn't Thanatos risen behind him, Henry thought he might have run into the quicksand to his right.

"Not this time," his flier said, and Henry felt relief swell in him. "We planned on leaving soon. There are other places we must be."

"Very well," said Cevian, not without a tinge of disappointment. "Worry not, it is quite alright. I will tell Mother." With that, she disappeared back into the colony.

Henry sensed his bond's burning gaze on him yet could not bring himself to speak. He vividly recalled the last leather case that had arrived from the Fount and what it had entailed. "May we leave tomorrow?"

"We may."

In a long while, Henry hadn't been so glad that Thanatos asked him not where exactly he wanted to go.

***

Henry focused on breathing deeply as he stared at the rushing waterfall in front of him, sensing the cool stone against his back. The colony had gone to sleep hours ago, yet he couldn't rest. If he closed his eye, he would yet again see . . .

"What has driven you out here?"

Henry shot up from where he had sat, sunken against the rock with his fingers digging into the sand. "Forgive me if I worried you," he mumbled.

"I need no apologies. I need to know what drove you out here," said Thanatos in an almost accusing tone before settling next to him.

Henry did not meet his gaze; he blew out a breath and pulled his legs to his chest, angrily wiping loose strands of hair, which reached the middle of his back now, out of his eye. From his pocket, he produced a hairband and haphazardly tied it at the back of his neck.

"Henry?"

"I wish not for you to worry."

"Well, I am worried," exclaimed Thanatos. "Look at me, please." When Henry still did not react, he slid closer until he could press his head into Henry's side. "When will you at last learn not to battle any fears on your own?"

Henry hesitated. "Recall you that nightmare I had before we departed?" he whispered eventually, without looking at him.

"The one about being subjected to a furious mob? Being trialed?"

"I dreamed the same thing again."

"Oh no . . ."

"I've had no nightmares since we departed!" exclaimed Henry. "Not once! I have no nightmares because I no longer have fear. I have no fear of falling or of drowning. I have no fear of darkness or of loneliness," he hissed. "I have no more fear!" Briefly, a leather mailcase flashed before him . . . But why would a mailcase impact his nightmares?

It's not the mailcase, a voice in his head whispered without his consent. It's the invisible weight that clings to it.

"You have no fear . . . of the things you listed," said Thanatos slowly.

"I have no fear," insisted Henry, yet he couldn't prevent his voice from cracking. "I have freedom. I shall not have fear of something so ridiculous as—" He broke off, finding himself unable to even put this absurd fear into words.

"I have given this some thought," said Thanatos after a while. "Why Dalia's decision filled you with so much fear."

"It did not—"

"And I would tell you that there is nothing to fear, but—"

"There is nothing to fear!" exclaimed Henry. "I . . . I am not supposed to have fear," he mumbled. "I wish to no longer have fear. I worked so hard to eliminate it. I am not weak. Not helpless, and not unfree. I am—"

"You are not weak, not helpless, and not unfree," said Thanatos. "And yet one may never entirely eliminate fear. The only thing we can do is not let it rule us. Was that not what we promised—that we would no longer let fear rule us?"

"This is so ridiculous." Henry scoffed. "I can not even say what it is exactly that I fear."

"You fear . . . losing it all."

"What?"

"That is the conclusion I came to. Recall you? I said that I had given this some thought, and I concluded that what you fear is losing it all," said Thanatos pensively. "Losing what you have now—your strength, your independence, your freedom. You fear that if you ever find yourself forced to confront your past and what you once did, it may not be enough to save you. That, no matter how successful an outcast you make the Death Rider, it will all lose its meaning once . . . they discover that you are Henry."

"But . . . said you not that nothing can take away my achievements?" asked Henry in a hoarse voice.

"And this holds true . . . In your own eyes and in mine, it always will."

"But not in everyone else's."

Thanatos looked at him pensively. "It is not enough for you, is it?" he asked after a pause. "To be here, to . . . matter to only me."

Henry whipped around to him. "It matters greatly to me to matter to you!"

"That is not what I meant," amended Thanatos. "I don't mean to say that you care not about mattering to me but that you care about mattering to others as well. To . . . be acknowledged," he said quietly. "And so, it scares you to imagine that everything you have tried to build for yourself out here, everything you have achieved, that you take pride in, that makes you admirable, would lose its meaning if they ever learned who you are. To imagine that they would judge you only for what you did as Henry of Regalia."

"They would be wrong!"

"They would be, of course," soothed Thanatos. "And yet it scares you anyway."

Henry couldn't hold his gaze for long. He whipped away, crossing his arms and pulling his legs to his chest. "I shall not allow that to happen. They have no right to judge me. Not anymore. They have no right to instill fear within me!" he yelled out into the dim jungle. "No right!"

"None," said Thanatos, to his surprise.

Henry pivoted back to him. "You agree?"

"I do," said his flier. "You have done so many good things since your treason that they long outweigh it. And even if they presume to possess the right to condemn you . . . what could they do to someone who has learned to thrive in exile? You are no longer dependent on their acceptance or their absolution. They cannot contain you."

"They may attempt to execute me."

"The one and only star pupil of Kismet's?" exclaimed Thanatos. "The one who celebrated fifty victories as the gnawer's grandest champion? Who may soon put up a fight to Ripred? I'd love to see them try."

"I . . . am not dependent on their absolution," mumbled Henry, staring into the tangle of vines beyond the hot spring.

"Which is why you are free!" insisted Thanatos. "Which is why you mustn't be scared of yourself or your future."

"I make my own future."

"So you do. And yet you still saw yourself in her," said Thanatos. "In Dalia . . . in her, placing her future in their hands. But it wasn't that she had no control over the situation. On the contrary . . . she consciously made this decision despite having an alternative."

"And this is why I should not fear this," hissed Henry. "I may fear a situation in which I have no choice. But I would never be so foolish as she!"

"You . . . can only change as much as you allow yourself to change."

Henry's head snapped up.

"Recall you?" asked Thanatos. "I told you this a long time ago. And it has held true, has it not?"

Henry considered it—all the ways in which he had changed since exile—and realized that his flier was right. At times, he had thought to be out of control, subjected to the whims of fate, but in the end, he had always concluded that no matter how uncontrollable the experiences, only he himself could decide what he took away from them and in what ways he allowed them to change him.

"I cannot control all my circumstances, yet I can control what they mean to me," he said. "What I learn and take away from every uncontrollable whim of fate."

"And so you have turned every rock bottom into an opportunity, a victory, a . . . lesson," urged Thanatos. "And so, only you can ever decide whether you will make a choice like Dalia's."

"I shall not," said Henry, suddenly feeling fresh hope flood him. "I shall not ever let it come this far."

"If you are so adamant, then cease fearing that you may ever change into someone who might, after all."

"I wish I could."

"You know what I think?" said Thanatos, looking at him with eyes that were no more than amber slits. "I think that, deep down, you sense within yourself the potential to change in this manner, and that is what frightens you. What frightens you even more is the idea that if you ever did make this choice—if you ever took such a gamble with your freedom and autonomy and faced your past—it might unfold just like it did for Dalia. That you might not even regret it. That it, in fact, could give you everything you yearn for but cannot obtain out here in exile: to no longer be alone. To have acknowledgment . . . to matter to more than only me."

"Be still!" hissed Henry. "I shall never gamble with my freedom and autonomy, not even for a prospect like that. You and I are more than enough," he said, and at the same time, he thought that both he and Thanatos could tell it wasn't true. "I shall not yield to their judgment. I shall not concede! Not if Sandwich rises from his grave to tell me in person!"

"Well, then that is settled." Thanatos lay down beside him with a yawn. "You shall not concede unless you decide otherwise. To fear the possibility of this happening is . . . uncharacteristically existentialist, even for the Henry of New."

Henry groaned. "I know. I am not any more pleased about this particular development than you. I did not mean for the Henry of New to be a moody existentialist." He threw his arms in the air. "Death, let us go somewhere we can do battle. Let us seek action instead of sitting around here and waiting for the existentialist questions to catch up with us."

Thanatos laughed. "I suppose I should be grateful that you sought to speak about this fear instead of choosing to run from it directly."

Henry made a face. "Considering what happened last time I did that, I am not keen to try it again. But Death, I am not a moody existentialist. I am a warrior!" he exclaimed. "I am one of the greatest warriors in the Underland. I am a champion worthy of his acclaim. I am a legend, known far and wide, even beyond the reaches of what we call the mapped lands. And I will not be anything else—least of all afraid."

"So you are," Thanatos concurred. "You know what? On second thought, Splintleg does still owe us our bounty. Considering the crowd your name draws, he might be delighted to see us even if we fight conditionally like before."

"Oh, he will," said Henry with a smile. "This is something that Longclaw taught me: They come not to see you win; they come to see you fight. One who fights spectacularly will be cheered on even if they fight only volunteers. Even if they refuse to kill."

"If anything, you do fight spectacularly."

"We," amended Henry. "And I shall not hear that you did not enjoy it the slightest bit."

"Unlike you, I am not a natural-born champion, and I am not particularly bothered by that," said Thanatos after a pause. "But . . . I cannot deny that it has its . . . appeal. As long as our opponents are there of free will, I suppose it matters little whether we do battle as mercenaries or professionally, for an audience."

"I am the champion." Henry laughed, stretching and finally laying down with his head in the curve of Thanatos' neck. "And you are the one who ensures that I stay unhurt and grounded. This irony is even more delightful than the irony that is us returning to that very first arena as acclaimed champions."

"The irony of all this is my favorite part," replied Thanatos. "And there is also still the fact that a visit to Kismet's is long overdue. She will have missed us."

"I miss her," mumbled Henry. "She will absolutely delight in our saddle."

"Stop calling it "ours"!" hissed Thanatos. "And stop reminding me."

"Fine." Henry's smile widened. "Your saddle, then."

"If you say that one more time, I will tell Kismet about our first test run and your falling off."

Upon that, Henry laughed so hard that he almost shed tears. "I wouldn't hear the end of it!"

"That is right, brat." Thanatos yawned. "And now sleep, lest your worst existentialist fears catch up to you."

Lying the way he did there, with his bond, Henry thought it was not so hard to not be afraid after all.