81

Michael, his mind fried and his body exhausted, spent the next two hours carefully listing the problems with his sketches while Davi made his own. Michael had never seen him draw anything, but his hands moved quickly and efficiently, and he approached it with greater patience than Michael would’ve expected. By the time he was done, Michael had sketches of his wife, Sara, his sons, Vick and Gabe, and his daughter, Laura. When Davi finished the last of them, he handed it to Michael, who spread them all out in front of himself and took a deep breath as he looked over them. Tears welled in his eyes, and he wiped them away with the back of his hand.

“Thank you, Davi. I really appreciate this.”

He shook his head, grabbing another sheet of paper. “No, this is a good idea. I think I’ll draw my mama too. I don’t want to forget her either.” He started gradually sketching out a woman on his own paper, his usual frown on his face and his heavy brow furrowed, but with focus rather than annoyance.

Michael very carefully took each of the sketches and folded them before placing them into his pack. He’d have to make copies with the ink duplication spell once he got the chance. He wasn’t certain it would work, but maybe Ollie could help him with a variation. With those secured, he felt his mania start to fade and even greater exhaustion seep into his bones. He wasn’t sure of exactly what had gripped him, but he was grateful he had the sketches, grateful he’d have another way not to lose their faces. He lay down, and very suddenly, sleep took him.

“—them bigger,” said Ollie, peering over Davi’s shoulder as he sketched.

“That size would stretch credulity, my friend,” said Pyotr from the other side of Davi. “Besides, the smaller ones are more elegant.”

Michael sat up, bleary-eyed and pushed his hair out of his eyes.

Marcus was cleaning his gun near his bed and seemed to be inventorying his ammunition as well. Michael noticed he’d kept his bow from the siege and had somehow managed to hold onto a half-dozen of the arrows made from the Carrion King’s feathers. He glanced over at Michael, seeing the questioning look in his eyes.

“After Davi finished making portraits that were meaningful, Ollie convinced him to shift focus to something a bit more important.”

Michael caught a glance of the lewdly posed woman who bore a meaningful resemblance to Eva Green that Davi was drawing and laughed.

“Wish we’d known that was something you could do back at the academy. Would’ve been a real game-changer.”

Davi shrugged. “I had forgotten it. I stopped drawing when I became a cop. It hasn’t been at the front of my mind since being here.”

Crick was pretending to be sharpening his spear, but his eyes were very clearly drifting to what Davi was working on.

“This is a real woman in your world?” he asked.

Michael got out of bed and stretched, hearing his stomach groan from its emptiness as he did so.

“She is, though she’s being a bit… exaggerated from what I can tell.”

Ollie shook his head. “No exaggeration at all, mate. That’s accurate.”

Crick shook his head. “I don’t know how a woman from your world can seem both over and underfed at the same time, but… I can’t say I mind it.”

“How long was I out?” asked Michael as he drank some water and searched for some of the food he had squirreled away in his pack.

“Just a few hours,” replied Marcus as he checked the straightness of his gun’s barrel. “Bayle was here briefly to tell us we wouldn’t be leaving until tomorrow, but I haven’t heard anything aside from that.”

“Anyone hurt in the infirmary?”

Marcus sighed and fished a couple of copper coins out of his pocket, then he stood up and handed to Ollie, who was smiling smugly, before returning to where he was sitting.

“We already checked. No major injuries, just a few men with a stomach bug you wouldn’t be able to do anything about.”

Michael nodded, finding a small pouch of mixed nuts he’d shoved into his pack some unknown time ago. He started to scarf them down quickly.

“What was the bet?” he asked.

“Ollie said you would ask about the injured before you ate, I said after.”

Michael nodded as he chewed. There was clearly no doubt he would. The question was about what his first priority would be. Considering how hungry he’d been when he awoke, he’d say they’d had even odds up until that moment.

Michael devoured the nuts he’d found, as well as a small sliver of salted beef and some tough bread that had wound up gathered at the bottom of his pack over his travels. They’d learned quickly that meals were irregular when they travelled as much as they did, so all of them had developed a bit of a supply of their own that would help them get by. They could’ve foraged too, but roots weren’t anyone’s first choice.

Once he was fed, he made his way to the infirmary anyway, just to make sure that no one needed any help. The bespectacled medic was no longer there, and the man that was didn’t refuse the extra help. He healed those dealing with vomiting, healing throats made sore by stomach acid and broken blood vessels in their faces from the strain, but unable to relieve them of their sickness. He’d noticed that while there had been some sickness at every camp and fort he’d been in, it wasn’t nearly as bad as he’d seen and heard of in accounts of war from his own world’s history. He presumed that the ability to purify water easily with magic was probably a major help with that.

When he was done, he went back to his room and looked around for his mirror.

Pyotr pulled it out of his bedroll and handed it to him. “Sorry, brother, I was trying to see how much I’d gained. I cannot rely on you always for this.”

“No problem,” said Michael as he stared into the mirror, watching the golden letters take shape. He very quickly found a new Deed and focused on it.

Rift Sealer:

When in or around a Rift grants:

Middling Protection

Michael frowned as he considered that. It was certainly a useful ability if he was near a Rift, but it was much harder to game in the way he could his other abilities. Protection was also complicated. His amulet also granted protection. At first he’d been confused about exactly what that meant, but he’d seen enough arrows stop just short of him and blades narrowly deflected that he’d begun to figure it out. Durability handled how much damage he could take and keep moving, but protection actually prevented that damage. If very minor protection could keep him safe from the occasional arrow, then middling protection was a tremendous boon. It also seemed like a very rare benefit. He’d only seen it on the amulet and on his new Deed. No one else seemed to have been granted any Deeds or Titles that gave it.

He thought again about what he’d seen in the portal. Those horned men had been nearly twice his size, but he’d managed to take two down by himself before the others could even react and then held his own against the other two with only moderate difficulty. Was the difference his Titles and Deeds made? If he could fight that hard against creatures like those, how strong would he be compared to someone from his old world?

What were the Rifts, for that matter? The way that Kline had spoken about them back at the academy had made them seem like a calamity long passed, something that didn’t need to be worried about by them anymore. Michael guessed that they were portals to other worlds, based on what he’d seen. If almost all of them were different from one another, as Bayle had said, could that mean that one could lead to Earth? He supposed he would’ve heard about it if that had happened, but that assumed that the Rifts corresponded to the same times and locations. If one opened on Earth in the bottom of the ocean or the center of the Sahara, how would anyone know for sure?

For that matter, maybe it had happened before. Maybe there was a lost Roman legion in Hume at some point, or this is where the USS Eldridge had been. Maybe those Amelia Earhart bones they’d found were an elaborate cover-up because this is what had really happened to her, and she’d spent the back half of her life slaying titled beasts. Most of the Rifts seemed to lead to things that were dangerous, considering the impacts that they’d had, but maybe it was possible that a few of them linked up to friendlier places. He shook his head as he thought of that. The sheer menace he sensed from the Rifts… he just felt like they were there for a malicious purpose. Down to his core.

He lay back down in bed, his mind spinning around the different possibilities of the Rifts as he slowly drifted back to sleep. He hoped that this time they would wake him when dinner was ready.