We were told that for the remaining week before deployment that we'd continue going through some exercises, so while our patrol routes hadn't been shortened to compensate, Serge gave Amalia and myself an unsubtle hint that we should try to get done a little early if we could. That was absolutely fine with me, since I'd spent the majority of the time since my encounter with Silver Rush wanting to get her to the schoolhouse so we could have an open heart-to-heart on the situation here. Unofficial orders from Serge to finish the patrol early was a great opportunity for that.

At the end of our patrol the next day, I pulled her over in the air and told her to follow me as we diverted away from the flight path back to base. Her dusty goggles made it hard to read if she was questioning my directions, but she didn't offer any verbal disagreement.

The little dilapidated building was closer than I remembered, situated at the end of a looping neighborhood of collapsing but unburnt homes. That was good. By my figuring we had maybe half an hour to spare here, so if the building wasn't, well, occupied, that gave us plenty of time to chat.

We both touched down on the roof near the bell tower, eliciting a deep and worrisome groan from the tired old structure. Amalia kept her wings flared for an emergency liftoff. “Uh, Kasimir, what are we doing here?”

I held up a talon and poked my head into the tower. I couldn't spy anyone through the fallen wall in the back and didn't hear anything other than the occasional pop from settling boards. All clear. “Come in, I'll explain in a moment.”

Without waiting for her, I slipped through the opening, dodged a bit of debris, and confirmed that the two of us were alone. Behind me, Amalia's approach was heralded by rhythmic creaks of the floor, a pause as she discovered the same crusty old condom that nobody had yet mustered the courage to remove, and slightly slower creaks as she eased into the room. “No, really, why are we here?” she stressed.

“I know what it looks like, but that's not it.” I swept a claw over my half of the room. “It's pretty clean over here.”

She didn't budge from the entrance. “Okay, but you still haven't really explained.”

“I just wanted to talk with you for a few minutes in private is all. As you've probably guessed, some of the troopers have other uses for this place, but that's all I've ever used it for.” The one time. “Is that okay?”

Amalia's glower faded. “Talk? Uh... okay. But why here? Shouldn't we be getting back to base? We have a formation drill this afternoon.”

Oh, would you just come over here already? I waved for her and said, “This won't take that long, and, well, it's kind of private. Remember when I told you I'd explain our squad being under strength?”

That got her attention, and she drifted over. “Oh, okay. But doesn't the rest of the squad know already? Why keep that quiet?”

“They do, but there were a few other things I wanted to talk about afterward. Is that okay? I was hoping that if I explained that, you might be willing to tell me a little about yourself and what it was like to grow up among the Talons. Okay?”

She tested the strength of a strip of sheet rock behind her and opted not to lean against it. “...alright. So, what happened?”

“I really hate to tell you this now, but, well, my previous partner, Ida Whiptail, was killed in an accident a few months ago. Specifically, I caused it.” The pause that followed wasn't deliberate or done for emphasis. I really just launched into it without preparing myself very well. “I... suffer from severe insomnia sometimes. I was so sleepy that I dropped my gun on patrol. When it hit the ground it went off and hit her.”

Amalia stared silently. “Wh... at? How?”

I wasn't sure which part she was questioning. “I don't know, but it's what happened. You can ask the others.”

She pulled her rifle closer. “But... every weapon made after the first few years of the war is designed to not discharge when dropped. Don't you perform regular maintenance on them?”

“We do, but I guess five stories is past the tolerances they were tested to.” I scratched my foreleg. “Again, I'm sorry to be telling you now and I wish you had some choice on your assignment, but I thought you should know the truth. I know this isn't very comforting...”

“Just... what are the odds?” she murmured, staring at her rifle. “And, blood feathers... yesterday the corporal's weapon misfired and almost shot the sergeant. Someone higher up needs to know we've got these defective weapons. Even more people are going to die at this rate!”

Whoa, whoa there, this wasn't the direction I intended to take things. “My incident went all the way up to Captain Stern I'm sure, so someone relevant has to know. I don't know what Lieutenant Blackfeathers is going to do about yesterday, if anything, but we've done all we can about it.”

“What if it's not enough?”

Then we were in deep brahmin dung. “There's not much else we can do. Look, sorry, I didn't mean to scare you like this. As far as I know this has never happened before. Just a fluke.” I patted my pistol holster. “I trashed my rifle in the process, so it's gone anyway. I'm sure Sam will get Leigh's fixed.”

“I'm not scared,” she said. “Just... concerned. I can accept that accidents happen, but not that often, and not that disastrously.”

She really wasn't going to like working with me then, but as far as I knew there really wasn't any other choice for her. “Sorry, but I don't know what else to tell you. I wouldn't have brought it up at all, but I didn't want you to not know.”

“Now I do, I guess. Thanks for telling me...” Amalia sighed. “So, insomnia you said? How'd you even get hired with that?”

“I didn't volunteer it. I hoped it wouldn't be an issue, but I guess that was kind of dumb in hindsight. I haven't had any trouble with it for a while though, so try not to worry about it.”

She scanned me with those piercing eyes. “I just don't understand. Did you want to work for Master Red Eye that badly?”

There was that again. I held up a talon and said, “We should probably talk about that for a second first. There are a few griffons, like my crazy sister, who actively wanted to work here, but I'm not one of them. I just really needed the money and didn't have a lot of options.”

Amalia narrowed her eyes a little and cocked her head. “Okay... now I really don't understand. If you don't care about working here, why do you make such a big deal about treating the slaves like real workers instead of the slaves they are? I wasn't sure even Master Red Eye meant anything he said, so why do you believe it?”

Huh? Was it that much of a mystery? “...I... feel bad for them. Really. They've all been snatched out of their lives and forced to work here in terrible conditions, many of them to their deaths. I watched a group of them literally beat each other to death for Red Eye's amusement. So, yeah, I feel really bad for them if I think about it.”

Whatever that meant to her, she just thought silently for ages. I was probably hoping for too much that she'd unconditionally agree with me, but I hoped for a tiny bit more sympathy. This was probably going to be a very rocky working relationship.

“Do you?” I asked without really thinking, mostly to break the silence.

She wrung her claw around the grip of her rifle. “I don't know. None of this is what I expected.”

Well, that made two of us. “So, what were you expecting then?”

“I don't know,” she said simply. “Up until I was deployed here I'd only met a clawful of ponies in my life. I knew it wouldn't be like training, but I didn't know what it would be like. A little more... exciting, I hoped.”

“Not minding slaves all day?”

She looked up and nodded. “Fillydelphia was a competitive deployment. I thought that meant that I'd be given something more important to do.” She flicked her eyes away. “No offense.”

It wasn't like I cared about rank here or anything. “None taken. But, this is a 'competitive deployment?' You had other choices?”

“A few others. Talon Company has subcontractors and bases all over Equestria. Fillydelphia is the big one that everyone aspires to, but not everyone makes it. If you don't make the grade sometimes you get hired out to caravans, or somewhere like Shattered Hoof.” She looked back. “Or if you really don't make it then you get shoved into a support position somewhere. Kind of like the lieutenant's assistant.”

“Oh, really? Was Egon hatched by Talon company?”

Amalia half-shrugged. “I'm guessing he was, but I don't know him personally.”

“Or Otto, maybe.” She didn't seem to recognize the name, so I clarified. “The kid that works in the armory.”

“You let griffawns work in the armory!? No wonder the guns are-”

I caught her there before she jumped track back onto that subject again. “It's okay, he just hands out weapons that have already been issued. Sam does all of the maintenance.” Probably.

She relaxed a hair. “Oh. Good. I swear, this place...”

There wasn't any need to finish that sentence. At least I could take a little solace in the thought that I was working with someone who wasn't enthusiastic about the conditions. “Yeah… but, as I was going to ask: you said that griffons that don't make the grade get put in positions like that, but he's not really even old enough for that I don't think. Is that normal?”

“I figure my surprise is enough of an answer to that,” she said, again wringing a claw around her rifle. “No, it's not. They must do things differently here. My guess is that he was hatched and raised here. They probably never gave him any training and just told him to do it when he was old enough to follow orders.”

And now for the thousand bit question. “Not how it happened for you?”

She stopped strangling her rifle and considered her response. “No.”

“So, what was it like then? Growing up on a Talon base?”

Amalia shrugged. “I don't know. I've only ever grown up once, so I can't say what it's like compared to life out in the wastes. We always had food and water. Everything was clean. We didn't have raiders and psychos shooting at us every day.”

That actually sounded kind of nice, if maybe blown a little out of proportion. “Hey, you make it sound like we were digging through trash for food all of the time,” I joked.

“I… know it wasn't that bad.” Her eyes flicked about a bit. "...right?"

“Nah. Not for us anyway. Maybe some of the less fortunate ponies had to do that sometimes, but we had it pretty nice overall. My ma was a doctor, and my papa is an armorer. Well, he was before he got sick anyway. We traveled a lot. Both of those professions are in high demand I guess, so we had what we needed most of the time.”

She nodded. “Makes sense. It sounds nice too, if you're into traveling like that.”

“Aren't you?”

“Not really. We very rarely left Stonetalon AFB, and I was just fine with that. It was home, and far away from all of the craziness below.” She laid her gun down. “We had a scare once about some pegasi from the Enclave flying kind of low, but other than that it was pretty safe.”

That sounded pretty terrifying to me, frankly. I'd yet to meet a pegasus, but I'd heard enough about them to want to keep it that way. They'd have razed the base and taken anything useful without blinking an eye. “That's good, but it's really not that bad in most places. If you can believe it, before I came to Fillydelphia I'd only seen one shootout and that was caused by a drunk pony getting a little too uppity over a bill.”

That got a tiny little smirk out of her. “They kept telling us that it was all anarchy and raiders out here. I'm glad to hear it's not quite so terrible.”

“It's not. So, do you have any family?” Dang it… if she'd been treated like the hatchlings were here, I knew the answer to that.

“Sure.” Wait, really? “Well, family to me anyway. I guess it's different for you, but we all grew up together so we considered ourselves brothers and sisters. Nobody knew their parents, but we all treated Ms. Stormswallow as our mom, I guess. There were fifteen of us in my class, so a bigger family than even you had.” She smirked again.

“Heh, that's one way of looking at I guess.” It must have made Hearth's Warming a big ordeal though…

Amalia fiddled with the strap on her gun. “Still… we didn't know who our parents were or if any of us even were really related, but I did have a biological sister there. They gave us randomized family names so we wouldn't know, but the two of us, we knew. She was two years older than me, but we look so much alike that there's no question. Maybe you've even met her? Valerie Nightsky?”

Didn't ring any bells. “Sorry. Do you know where she's assigned?”

“Second platoon. That's all I know.”

“Really? Small world. My sister is in second platoon too. Liese Longtalons. I'll have to ask her next time I see her.”

Amalia brightened up. “Would you? I'd really appreciate that. I haven't seen Valerie in more than a year. Ever since she was deployed.”

Now we were getting somewhere. “Of course, I'd be happy to. I'm not sure when I'll see Liese again with the change in assignments, but I'm sure it won't be too long.”

“Thanks.” She picked her gun back up. “So, should we get going now? It's been a little while.”

As much as I hated to admit it, she was probably right. I really wanted to ask her about how the Talons at Stonetalon AFB felt about ponies and a dozen other things, but if we were late getting back to base there was going to be a lot of brahmin dung to dig out of. Probably for the best that we didn't discover just how much.

I agreed, on the condition that we catch up more later, and the two of us headed out.

The final week before deployment went by in a flash. Every day before or after patrol we'd have a drill of some kind, and while we managed to avoid any more life threatening mishaps, I can't say that I learned a whole lot. I was able to hit a target with acceptable accuracy, apparently, so that was good. I could also fly in formation, so long as we went in a mostly straight line. A crash course in tactics would have been nice, but I'd have to live with the very brief mock combat exercise we got on the last day in the city. My head still ached where some pink griffon cocked me with an inactive grenade by mistake. At least that drove home a lesson for me: don't take your helmet off. Ever.

But, as they told us, odds were pretty low that anyone would be dumb enough to shoot at us out in the field. If we got into a serious fight, I was going to do exactly what Amalia did, since she'd spent twenty years learning how to do this. I was going to make an honest effort to not hide behind anyone, but when the bullets started raining around me I had a sneaking suspicion that I wouldn't be entirely in control of such decisions.

Steel Rangers were another matter, but Serge assured us that we wouldn't be going anywhere near them for the foreseeable future. The little group that had parked and set up camp outside of Fillydelphia had been quiet for so long that there were doubts they were even still there, but I figured if that was the case we'd have kicked in the door and taken anything valuable.

Deployment day itself was a new experience though, and for a while I was a little awed at the sight of a couple hundred griffons lined up under the early morning haze at the front gates, standing in tight formations and fully geared up for their coming assignments. City watch was going to be pretty thin if so many were leaving Fillydelphia, but that was neither my decision nor my problem. Liese would be here when I got back.

For our part, our squad had been issued a few new tools and goodies. Everyone, myself included, was weighted down with an extra pack of survival gear and supplies, including enough rations to last us three days each and enough water for one day. It was heavy and inconvenient to haul around with everything else, but at least it wasn't as bad as the bedroll. I guess I was lucky though, since in addition to that I only had to carry one extra pouch of medical supplies, including a few super restoration potions for dire emergencies. Those were worth enough that I kept them strapped on the opposite side to the rest of the junk I had, since breaking one would probably make the lieutenant very unhappy.

I was lucky, because the others had some downright onerous looking pieces of equipment in their care. Isaac was supposed to be our squad's radio operator, but given his disabilities the honor had been shifted to Leigh for the time being. The radio pack looked like it must weigh fifteen kilograms by itself, but so far she'd been stoically ignoring its weight. Carmelita, on the other claw, had some kind of squad support machine gun strapped across her back, plus a box of ammunition for it. I doubted that it was really supposed to be his job, but Serge appeared to have two more boxes of ammo with his pack. The sight of the high caliber weapon reminded me of just what we might be getting ourselves into, and the fact that I still had only my little pistol…

Once again, I recited a promise to myself in my head that if shooting happened, I was going to find the nearest solid chunk of something to hide behind and let the others shoot back. I'd best just hope that we didn't get shot at in the air, since clouds did not count as something solid.

We must have stood in formation for five or ten silent and tense minutes. Everyone was present so far as I was aware, so I'm not sure what the delay was for, but eventually the silence was broken by Captain Stern's amplified voice. “Everyone at attention! We're preparing to mobilize. We have four field bases that you will be reporting to to receive your assignments. You're going to be breaking up by platoon and squad. First platoon, squads one through six are with Lieutenant Heidi Blackfeathers and squads seven through twelve are with Staff Sergeant Olga Redtalons. Third platoon, squads one through eight are with First Lieutenant Freija Ironclaw and squads nine through sixteen are with Staff Sergeant Rolf Hailstone. We're deploying by squad, starting with the first squad of first platoon. When the squad ahead of you is airborne, wait for your flight leader and stay in formation.”

She really stressed the last part, so I was glad that I did surprisingly well at formation flying during our drills. Staying behind and to the left of Serge wasn't hard, so I'd be fine.

As she said, we took to the skies in a very orderly manner. I didn't really know who was leading off or anything of the sort, but it was simple to shuffle into position when everyone else in our squad did. Once Serge lifted off, I gave a little hop and beat my wings to fall into the air in position behind him, followed by Leigh to my right, Amalia behind me and Isaac and Lita behind Leigh.

In just a few seconds we were past the walls and heading out over the moat, bubbling and rancid smelling as ever, and finally past it and over the gravel and sand surrounding the city. An almost peaceful sensation washed over me as we left the accursed place behind, tempered a little by the realization that I was still a Talon and wasn't really leaving. I'd be back soon enough, if something truly awful didn't happen to me out here in the field, but for just a moment I chose to accept the elation.

Who knew? Maybe I'd even like field duty. I wouldn't be watching slaves and if I had to shoot someone it was going to be bandits or raiders. I might even be able to convince myself that I was doing the world some good.

I had to suppress a little amused snort as I banked to follow Serge toward the vast open wastes ahead. Yeah, sure. I could tell myself that.

It's hard to estimate how long we must have flown, but the aching in my wings told me it was about twice as long as I'd have preferred. I was used to flying around Fillydelphia for hours at a time, but the extra weight didn't do my joints and muscles any favors. I'd get used to it in a few days, but today was not a few days from now.

We'd left the city maybe an hour after sunrise, so if I could determine where the sun was overhead I could guess just how far we'd gone. Even someone like me who wasn't accustomed to navigating long stretches in the air like this could assume that we'd flown past midday so the sun was maybe three or four hours past noon. Six or seven hours of continuous flight? We were probably flying at least ten kilometers per hour too, so sixty to seventy kilometers. Wow, no wonder my wings were tired.

And I suppose it wasn't completely fair to say we'd flown continuously since we did stop once so everyone could relieve themselves and eat something quickly, but that didn't give me much time to rest. At least we were gone before I had the chance to voice my concerns that the craggy little valley we'd nestled in didn't look like much of a field base.

The small mountain peak ahead definitely did. Even some distance out it was easy to pick out three pairs of griffons patrolling the skies overhead and some activity on the mountain itself. The closer we got, the more I could tell that the mountain had been modified as little as possible to accommodate our presence. In fact, I was kind of curious where we'd be at all since there wasn't much visible other than several machine gun emplacements carved into the mountainside and a few walkways here and there between openings. Was everything inside?

Our approach kind of confirmed that. We followed the squads ahead by drifting low and close to an outcropping, then circling around and overhead to reveal a vast landing strip for skywagons connected to entrances on the mountainside. Unlike a skywagon, we didn't need a runway or landing strip, and squad-by-squad we settled down near the entrances to wait for further orders. Or for Serge to move and signal where I was supposed to go next.

Chilly mountain wind whipped past and made me squint as I tracked Heidi among the mass of griffons standing around. She broke off, flanked by the ever present lavender griffon shadowing her, and circled around in front of all of us. Funny. I thought Egon would stay back in Fillydelphia. “Everyone inside! You'll be assigned temporary quarters and receive your field assignments shortly!”

Sounded good to me. My wings were killing me, and it was surprisingly cold in the exposed mountain air. If we didn't get deployed for real until tomorrow I might even have time to sleep for a while. Oh, was there hot water for a shower? This really could be a nice change from working in Fillydelphia.

The tormenting gusts ended the instant that I passed the threshold into the base itself. We passed a sign that read “Canyontalon Air Force Base,” stencil painted in white over something sprayed over with black. A reused prewar base? This wasn't the place that Amalia was from, was it? Seemed like she said it was called Stonetalon, but maybe they raised hatchlings here too?

We headed deeper into the mountain, down a long descending staircase lined with faintly humming gemlights. At the bottom, we entered a cavernous staging area that was filling with new arrivals. Three unarmored but uniformed griffons fluttered overhead to unseen errands, clipboards in claw.

Ahead, Heidi stopped next to a stack of crates taller than her and spun to face us again. “Welcome to Canyontalon, for those of you who haven't been here before. We'll finalize your field assignments soon, which you will receive this afternoon. In the meantime, your quarters have all been prepared. You will be operating out of Canyontalon for the next few weeks at least. Some squads may later be dispatched to forward positions in the field. You'll find out in your orders.

“Report to your designated quarters until you're called up for assignment. The barracks are on the level below us, numbered by squad. Dismissed.”

Like an anthill that was stepped on, the nice rank and file fell into disarray and began drifting toward the far side of the hangar or wherever we were. The ceiling was largely bare aside from support struts, but judging from the attachment points for heavy equipment and the gigantic hangar door to our side, this was clearly a prewar base. Griffon? Pony? ...Enclave? If the latter, did they take it, and if so, how?

No, that seemed pretty unlikely. There weren't any obvious markings to indicate its allegiance, so I decided to drop the question for then and followed quietly as we shuffled along with everyone else to our quarters. It was hard to miss the convenient illuminated number 3 on our room, and getting inside and out of the mass of mumbling troopers far past ready to relax was a nearly palpable relief in and of itself.

Serge and Lita quickly picked out bunks nearest the door, followed by Leigh and Isaac, leaving the last bunk open and obviously for me and Amalia. Huh. Which did I get?

“So, you like it on top or bottom, Kaz?” Lita asked without missing a beat as she dumped her pack next to her cot.

“Uh...”

If she couldn't get it out of me, she'd try her next victim. “Okay then, what about you new girl? I bet you like it on top, don't you?”

Amalia gave a bemused smirk. “I'm used to being on top.” She punctuated it by tossing her pack up onto the top bunk and indicating the bottom one for me.

Lita grinned, but instead of running the joke into the ground like I expected, she ambled around to one of the other bunks. “Hey, Ike, look, someone actually stitched up your mattress from last time. I thought you were going to have to hang it on the lieutenant's doorknob to get someone to patch it.”

“You've been here before?” I asked. I guess they'd have been deployed many times before I ever showed up, but to the same room?

“Last time was about nine months ago,” Leigh answered. “They try to keep things as consistent as they can in the field. Learn the job once.”

That made plenty of sense. “Right. So… how long do we have before we're shipped off? Where will we be heading?”

Serge didn't look away from inspecting his cot as he answered, “The lieutenant will have to answer that for us. She'll probably let us know within the hour, so don't get too comfortable. We probably won't get sent out again today, but it happens. Not many merchant caravans come this way, but that's usually what we get sent to handle. A lot of sleeping in the field depending on how far away they are.”

Lita rolled over onto her cot and shuffled her wings. “Do we at least get to sing a campfire song before we have to go?”

“You'll have to ask the lieutenant about that,” Serge said dryly.

“Pfft. She wouldn't have brought the marshmallows anyway.”

Now that was a word I hadn't heard in a long time. It had probably been nearly twenty years since I'd seen a marshmallow, but I still remembered the time my parents, Liese and I toasted some while we were staying in some town whose name I forgot just as long ago. They were so hard that at first I thought they were just charcoal briquettes, but after heating them up they were the best thing I'd ever eaten. So much sugar…

I knew Lita was joking, but at that moment I wondered if maybe I could find some somewhere and maybe send them to papa. Maybe one of the merchants we would be escorting would have some?

Yeah, that would be a nice gift. And next time, I was going to be delivering it to him personally, not Liese.

Despite Serge's warnings to not get too comfy, I stretched out on my cot and tried to get some rest. If I'm honest, I really tried to get some sleep since I was pretty confident I would have a hard time of that for the next few days. Naturally, the uncertainty of how long we had to sit around kept me too wound up enough to do more than just lay there with my eyes shut while trying to ignore the tapping of Leigh and Isaac on their portable terminals.

It's all for the best that I didn't get to sleep anyway, because sure enough, my luck came back to bite me in the ass when our orders arrived.

I bolted upright to look alert when I heard the knocking at the door, but nobody entered. Instead, Serge answered it, received something and sat down to read. After a few tense seconds, he blew out his breath and set the note aside.

“Alright everyone, look alive. We've got a problem.”

Leigh slapped her terminal closed. “What's wrong?”

“Stable 69, that's what's wrong.”

I half expected a joke from Lita on that, but when she kept quiet I felt the tension in my stomach tighten a dozen-fold. Either I misunderstood the jokes around that number, or this was way more serious than I was going to like.

Amalia shifted above me and her sandy tail dangled down from the bunk in front of my face. “Was that a reclamation job? Did something go wrong?”

He nodded. “A team of slaves was dropped off there last night to clean it out. Someone radioed in a call for help early this morning, and we haven't heard anything since.”

I peeked around Amalia's tail. “What did they say?”

Serge pointed at the sheet as if I could read it from where I was. “I don't know, it doesn't say. Patrols in the area haven't indicated anything unusual, so we probably have a revolt on our claws. Or Steel Rangers could have hit the stable while they were there, but I think we'd have noticed.”

Lita snorted. “You'd have heard the explosions from here. Probably just a bunch of idiots thinking they can shoot their way out to freedom. They've gotta know it always ends the same way.”

Serge got up and started grabbing his gear again. “Either way, we're being called up now. We've got support from fifth squad, but they're going to be watching our backs from the outside unless things really go bad. Everyone up and ready. The more time we waste, the worse this gets.”

I rolled off the bed and started grabbing all of my equipment, including my newly issued survival gear. Oh, my wings were so sore already, but my pounding heart told me to ignore that. Whether it was Steel Rangers or slaves with stolen guns, I was about to be heading down into the cramped confines of a stable where I was going to be shot at. I was going to have to shoot back, too. People were probably already dead.

Amalia jumped off of her cot and grabbed at her things too after flashing me a curious look. She didn't seem perturbed at all. I guess this was the excitement she'd been waiting for. “Stay calm. We're going up against untrained rebels. They'll probably surrender as soon as we get there.”

...why did I doubt it was going to be that easy?

“Don't count on it, sister,” Lita said, grabbing for her regular rifle in lieu of the machine gun she'd lugged out here. “They usually send the psychos to do this shit. We'll probably be dragging their bodies to the surface by the time it's said and done.”

Amalia didn't flinch. “If that's what it takes.”

I strapped my medical kit to my side with a shaky claw and checked to make sure the super restoration potions were still intact.

This was it. So much for liking field duty over city watch.

Gain Experience – You gain 1,500 experience points for exploring the gray frontier.