When I wake I'm sprawled across the floor of a landing craft. I look around. Rebel soldiers surround me, all talking and whooping, celebrating their victory.

We are in a narrow cavern. A river rushes from a dark crevice in the rock. Next to the massive, shadowed alcove is a a wall of rock facing us, with a square cave cut into it about twenty feet in the air.

The river turns and the narrow cavern opens up into a wider cavern, one I recognize.

Aroculan's fields are covered in blood, deep, thick crimson. Soldiers and rebels shuffle through the fields, cleaning up the dead and taking the wounded inside the palace for treatment. People who don't look like soldiers at all are running plows through the fields, taking out all of the plants and trees growing. They empty the rubble into the wide river and it is whisked away.

Kali appears next to me and hands me a glass of water. I gulp thirstily and then hand him back the empty glass.

"What are they doing to the fields?" I ask.

"They are stripping the fields. The battle ruined the crops, there's no reason to keep them," Kalin says.

"Are you guys going to replant them?"

"Yes of course, those fields are the food supply for all of Arocule. The demand for food will be high especially after a battle like this."

The landing craft sailed along the current of the river, straight towards the Strip in the middle of the water.

"Aroculan's soldiers are handling the defeat well," he says, "turns out they all thought of him as a tyrant, but none of them had the courage to fight back except the rebels." Kalin says.

"That's why you won," I say, "you fought for what you knew was right but you were also brave."

The landing craft dock at the shores of the Strip and we file onto the docks. Some soldiers linger on the surface but Kalin takes me downstairs to meet back up with Joss, Jonah, and Cicada.

Once inside the Strip, I feel much more secure. I've only been in a battle like that twice, and it never gets easier.

I hear Cicada before I see her. "ALARIC!"

My eyes follow the sound and find her rushing toward me, her eyes full of anger. "How could you fight in a battle without telling us!" She demands. "You could've died! You put the entire quest, the fate of the Network in jeopardy!"

"Relax, Cicada," I say, probably more nonchalantly than I should. That just sets her off again.

"Relax? How can I relax? One minute I was resting and the next I find out you left us here to go fight a war that has nothing to do with us! I was worried sick for an hour! Do you have any idea how it feels to be so totally helpless, to be able to do nothing but wait while your friend is out in danger? Do you have any idea the things my mind did to me? I imagined them coming to me and telling me that you didn't make it out, one-hundred different ways!"

"I'm sorry," I say moving in for an apology hug, hoping maybe that will melt into a kiss.

She places the palm of her hand firmly against my chest. "No," she says, "I don't think I'm ready to forgive you for this. Not yet."

"Wha-."

"I'm going back to the village. Join us when you please but don't go fighting anymore random wars," she says condescendingly, and then she's gone.

My chest hurts at the thought of her being upset with me. I've already had enough of that in my life, I don't need to be on Cicada's bad side either.

"Dax, would like to speak with you in the war room," Kalin says gingerly.

I trail Kalin to the war room, grateful for the distraction.

Inside the room it's just Dax.

"I hear you fought well," he says to me. "You are truly a skilled fighter, Alaric."

I nod.

"You may stay here as long as you need. Supplies for you journey has been gathered for you, so you may leave whenever you like."

"I think we'll stay for a little while longer," I say, "five days or so."

I remember the stanza from the Prophecy of Darkness:

Don't be too hasty,
For the time is set.

But don't run too slow,
Because Darkness is a threat.

"Very well. I'll arrange you a room on the palace after its cleaned up. For now, you may return to the village to rest, it'll take a while before everything is cleaned up out there."

I nod and follow Kalin out the door. We walk the the back of the cavern, through a narrow tunnel. At the end of the tunnel the walls open up a little. There is a heavy-looking wooden door at the end.

Kalin draws a key from his pocket and unlocks the door, revealing a much more spacious cavern.

The catering is dimly illuminated by torches all over the walls, giving the place and eerie glow. There are tents and rundown wooden shacks throughout the cavern. There is a well in the center.

Kalin takes me to the back of a cavern where there is a three story house. The house is made from smoothed logs, making the walls bumpy. There are also widows.

Kalin withdrawals another key, tucking the first one into his pocket, and unlocks the door.

"I presume you want some time away from you're friends right now?" He says, stepping through the door.

Inside is a magnificent seating area. Plush leather couches arranged around a ottoman with a candle chandelier over head. At one end of the room is a fireplace, and at the other is a door that leads into a bathroom.

The walls inside are paneled with planks, flat unlike the outside.

The is a staircase next to the fireplace, and an archway leading into the dining room, in the back of the living room.

"There is food arranged on the table if you'd like to eat. Upstairs there is a bathroom where you can freshen up, and I'll show you where you can rest once you're done bathing," he says, stripping off his vest and laying it across the back of one of the couches.

I trudge upstairs. "There are pajamas in the cabinet in the bathroom!" He calls from downstairs.

The stairs lead to a wide hallway with doors lining both of the walls. The bathroom is on the very end.

I walk into the bathroom and close the door behind me. I turn the dial on the porcelain tub and strip off my filthy, blood-stained clothes.

I sink into the water and let it relax my muscles. He has the same kind of bathtub as the on in the dormitory bathroom in the palace. I grab the bar of soap off the rack and start scrubbing my skin raw.

I'm not satisfied that I'm clean until my flesh is bleeding from being rubbed raw.

I get out of the tub, wrap a bandage around my bleeding chest, and towel off the rest of my body. Get dressed in white pajamas from the closet and return to the kitchen where Kalin is pouring cups of steamy black tea.

"Drink, you need to get something into your system. I've also got a loaf of bread and jam we can feast on once it warms up."

The dining room isn't as big as the balcony in the palace, but it's much less sinister. There isn't a group of ghouls judging what I'd do for them after they killed me and my friends here, or a window leading to vast fields with the dead laboring in them. The table, big enough to seat six, is covered in baskets of fruit and rolls and platters of fish, slabs of meat, and one with cookies. I sit down at the head of the table where a empty plate has been set up for me. I take the cup of tea in my hand and sip it gingerly. It's hot, but sweet.

Kalin pokes his head out the door across the room. "Please eat what you want."

I don't bothering shying the offer. I pile my plate with two steaks, some salmon, some shrimp, an apple, and a cookie.

I dig in as Kalin comes out of the kitchen with a loaf of bread between his hands, which are gloved with oven mitts.

"I like to cook," Kalin says as he slices the loaf into neat slices.

I would've never guessed that a soldier, a skilled killer like Kalin would find a culinary pastime, but I guess we all have our quirks.

"I grew up without a father, so instead of learning combat, or labor, or gentlemen etiquette, I learned household chores. After I joined the rebels, I learned all the things my mother couldn't teach me, but what she did teach me stuck."

"What happened to your father?" I ask.

"He worked in the fields. It was illegal for those of the lower class to have offspring, so my father was killed by Aroculan and my mother fled with me to the Strip where we found asylum until I reached sixteen and was able to join the cause."

"I'm sorry," I say.

"Why apologize? You did not kill him, did you?"

"No I didn't, I'm just sorry that happened to you."

"Well don't be. I cannot have someone like you feel sorry for me losing my father when I was a mere infant."

"Someone like me?"

"You an orphan, Alaric, and to much more savage terms than me."

"How'd you know that?"

"News of your mother's death circulated quickly down here Alaric. Like I said, you are a god to us."

"How do you find these things out?"

"Somewhere there is a prophet that gives the information to someone, and the news passes by the creatures down here to us."

"A prophet?"

"Yes. Undoubtably Alvus Constantine blessed someone with power to pass on his will to the people of the ground."

I guess he had a point. We ate in silence for the rest of the meal.

Once I finished the food on my plate, I stood and asked Kalin if he'd show me where he wanted me to sleep.

Just then I realized how clever he'd been. After I'd finished bathing, the only reason I'd bothered eating was because he hadn't told me where I was sleeping. If he'd told me what room was mine before I'd gotten into the bathtub, I wouldn't have eaten.

He's looking out for me. The thought made my heart warm a little as he guided me to the third level.

The hallway in the third level is narrow, with doors only on the left wall. There was three of them. One was my room, one was Kalin's room, and one was another bathroom. Why would anyone ever need two bathrooms when they're living alone?

My room is carpeted with plush, beige saxony. The walls are paneled with planks of dark rosewood. There is a massive bed against the far wall, with thick cream sheets pulled taut over the mattress. On either side of the bed are bedside tables with identical lamps on them.

Next to the door, there are two ceiling-to-floor bookshelves snuggled in the corner and a seating arrangement of plush chairs and a table. On the other side of the door is another seating arrangement around an idle marble fireplace.

On the left side of the bed is a rosewood table with four matching chairs and a stack of stone coasters in the center. Next to the coaster was a bottle of what I'm guessing is bourbon, and four glass cups.

One the other side of the bed was a rosewood dresser with brass handles on the drawers.

"This is your room," Kalin says. "If you want to make any personal changes to it just let me know and I can make that happen."

"Okay," I say. Kalin nods in farewell and closes the door behind him.

I click my tongue off the roof of my mouth and all the details come into focus. I walk over the the fireplace and grab the box of matches on the marble step. Wood is already stacked neatly inside. I light the math and toss it onto the wood, which lights easily.

I walk over to the bed. I'm already hot in these heavy pajamas, so I pull the pajama shirt over my head and lay over the back of one of the chairs. Then I crawl into the bed, snuggle under the thick blankets, and fall asleep within seconds. I sleep dreamlessly through the night.