SIMPKINS LOOKED AT Doom as the gromek roused, offering him a mug. “Figured you’d sleep longer. It isn’t quite sunrise.”

“I always wake before dawn.” Gratefully accepting the hot coffee, he downed half of it before he settled with a sigh, looking at the sleeping woman and wolflen. “Ti’s trainer would always come for her at dawn. I wanted to protect her. It was stupid, I know. All I could do was be there when she was taken away. Don’t know what I could have done.”

The ogre snorted. “Hardly stupid. You have no idea what it can mean to a person to have someone they can trust their lives to by their sides.” He nudged at the sleeping wind sprite. “Mya was one of my first conjurings. She eventually became her own being since I never dispelled the magic that created her. I have others who work with and for me, but it’s not the same as what you have with her, Tracker and Gareth.” He smiled sardonically. “Hells. What you have with the entire population of Bralden.”

Doom smiled ruefully, then considered the ogre. “I would imagine someone as charismatic as you would have all the friends you wanted.”

“Friendship doesn’t work like that. If it did, Tiwaz would have been swooning over me just being in my presence. Everyone in Bralden would have been falling over themselves to bring you both to me when I was looking for you. No, charisma alone does not create friendship. Though I suppose given your history, you’d not be as…knowledgeable.

“True friendship is something that there is no reasoning behind. No formula or steps to take to ensure it happens. There are things to do to not lose it, of course. But to create it?” He shook his head. “Every magic discipline tries to find a means to force it. Every philosopher, every scholar, every damned person who thinks they have the world figured out cannot figure that out. They’re idiots, the lot of them.” He leaned forward to get the coffee pot. “Business is a lot easier. Honest, dishonest, doesn’t matter. It’s all a matter of transactions and money. There is little question where you stand with working with someone.”

Doom held out his mug when Simpkins extended the pot in mute offer of refill. “It sounds like an empty life.”

“It is what it is,” the ogre began. Both startled when Tiwaz and Tracker both sat up, completely awake and looking around in alarm. He and Doom rose as the pair jumped to their feet and began grabbing gear, both rousing Gareth. “What’s going—?”

His words were cut off when a low rumble preceded the ground starting to shake violently. A crack started forming between the living land and the dead, rocky region. The ogre grabbed the disoriented Gareth and flung him back towards the trees just as the ground opened up at his feet and he disappeared from view.

His fall was abruptly stopped, his hand caught. He looked up to see Doom, the gromek’s grimace of effort and pain twisting his visage as he held onto the larger ogre’s dead weight. The gromek’s agonized expression turned to astonishment when the weight dragging him down lessened unexpectedly. Repressing his surprise, Doom pulled Simpkins back onto sturdier ground, the other three lending their support where they could.

“I don’t understand,” Doom began. “What—?”

Managing to smile through an expression taut with pain, Simpkins shrugged. “I practice psionics, remember? I made myself lighter to make it easier for you to pull me up. Levitation always gives me a royal headache. Given the choice between becoming an alcoholic to deal with the pain and limiting how often I use my ability, I choose the latter.”

“Ogre able fly?” Tracker asked, tilting his head in puzzlement.

Simpkins glanced at the wide chasm. “Fly? Not without either a lot more training or having something explode in my brain. I might have been able to keep from breaking every bone in my body. But without time to prepare, I’d likely have been dead from either the fall or the attempt to stop it.” He looked at the gromek with a blend of gratitude and puzzlement. “Not that I’m ungrateful, but…why did you help me?”

Doom shrugged as Tiwaz rubbed his shoulder to ease the ache. “You were willing to give your life to save one of us. It was the right thing to do.”

Simpkins coughed, looking towards the yawning chasm. “Sacrificing myself was not my intention.”

“Idiot magic user,” Tiwaz grumbled, her eyes focused on her work. “Anyone doing anything with the primary intention of dying deserves to die. You thought of someone else before yourself. Didn’t think magic users ever did that.”

“Charming as ever. You do realize that self-preservation is not solely the providence of those trained in the magical arts, Tiwaz?” Simpkins pointed out blandly. She did not look at him, but her cheeks turned bright red. He sighed, shaking his head. “I pray that you will one day be able to see magic users are not all bad for yourself one day.”

“Well, whatever your reasoning, Simpkins, I’m extremely grateful for you saving my life.” Gareth sighed, looking at the yawning chasm still cloudy with swirling dust. “I will miss that lute. It’s seen me through some incredible things. Oh, the stories it could have told, if lutes were capable of speech.” He noticed the expressions of his Bralden companions and reassured, “Oh, it wasn’t that sentimental. I’ve lost four lutes, including that one. Journeying is a hazardous occupation.”

Tracker, having walked along the edge of the chasm, howled to get the others’ attentions. Tiwaz, the only one of them fully conversant in the wolflen tongue, looked up with surprise. “He says there are carved steps that go down into the hole.”

“Really? Well, I suppose we should get to picking up what’s left of camp and see what the earthquake revealed,” Simpkins stated. Doom and Tiwaz traded astonished looks when the ogre joined them in the menial task, but did not comment more on it.