Hours later, Raena was finally sitting up, hissing slightly at the pins and needles sensation she felt along her body. She kept herself from gagging as she looked down at her left forearm. Staring at the layers of skin that had been ripped off by the draugr's vicious teeth made her sick with both anger and fear, and she looked away, slowly standing up and ignoring the pain that shot up her leg. She had thought the thorn bush she had landed in had only scratched the surface of her thigh, but it seemed it had cut deeper than she had initially suspected.

She scanned the small medical room, eyeing the many wooden bookshelves stacked with books, herbed potions, flora, and aromatic oil essences – all of which Grandpa Sage had either collected or concocted during their years in hiding. Her gaze finally landed on the messily arranged table, where a roll of bandages had been left. She walked towards it and unrolled enough to wrap it around her arm a few times. She tore at the fabric and placed what was left of the bandage roll back onto the table.

"Need help?"

Raena turned towards the familiar voice. Braedon leaned against the entrance, arms crossed, a small frown plastered on his face – not a look of disapproval. She couldn't recall Braedon ever disapproving anything she had done. Rather, he seemed riddled with concern. Raena held up her loosely bandaged arm in response, and he walked towards her unwrapping it.

"You should probably put some lotion on it first to keep it from infecting," Braedon suggested softly.

Raena looked past Braedon, towards the entrance, half-expecting the draugr to appear there. She kept her gaze averted from the fleshy mess that was her arm, and if Braedon was as disgusted as she felt, he made no show of it while he picked up one of the bottled antiseptic lotions on the table and began rubbing it gently over her arm. Raena bit the inside of her cheeks to keep from crying out as the cool, thick liquid sunk into her wound.

"Why aren't you sleeping?" Raena asked, more as a means of a distraction than genuine curiosity. The small window on the far side of the room had darkened with nightfall, the temperature having dropped considerably, and the starry night sky appeared to blink at her sleepily. She wanted nothing more than to lay back down on that stone bed and fall into a dreamless slumber. But that was out of the question.

"Because," Braedon shrugged casually, placing the bottle back and picking the bandage back up to begin wrapping the wound. "You can't sleep."

Raena tried to meet his gaze gratefully, but he looked fixated on her arm.

"It's not that I can't sleep, technically," Raena tried to sound optimistic. "I just don't want to. Not with that zombie thing chasing me in my subconscious," Raena half-chuckled, but it sounded awfully hollow. An image of the monster's blue, pitiless eyes flashed in her mind, and the sound of its neck snapping rang in her ears.

He tied up the bandage and Raena dropped her wounded arm by her side, sighing before sitting back down on the stone bed. She was so, so tired. Braedon sat beside her, and a long silence passed between them.

"I'm sorry," Braedon said finally. His voice was so quiet, Raena wasn't entirely sure if she had heard him correctly. "I'm sorry I can't... help in any way."

Raena noticed his hands in his lap, curled into tight fists. She blinked up at him, masking her surprise.

"What do you mean?" she held up her bandaged arm. "You've helped plenty. There's nothing anyone can do."

"I mean," he shook his head. "I'm not like Grandpa. I don't have powers that can help you. I don't even know what I can do."

Raena remained silent. She wasn't sure what to say. It would make sense if Braedon had received his grandfather's powers, the earth element, or even his grandma's – the water element. And yet, it seemed he had acquired neither. He never spoke of his parents, though it was probably because he never got the chance to know them. Unfortunately, they had died during the early stages of the Elemental War, and Grandpa Sage was always limited in supplying information about his beloved, deceased son and daughter-in-law. All Raena knew was that both parents were Terrans, so that ruled out any chance of him being any of the other remaining elements. Which was strange, and Raena had once searched as thoroughly questioned Grandpa Sage, but all distant relatives seemed to have a direct link to the Terran bloodline – the only exception being Braedon's grandma – who had, unfortunately, also moved on from this life.

"You do have magic," Raena finally responded. That much, she was sure. Myth had it that no ordinary human could survive on planet Caedus. It was a place of magic-dwellers only. So, Braedon must have one of the elements. Perhaps his simply hadn't been triggered yet. Some people were late bloomers – perhaps twenty-two years too late, but late, nonetheless.

"I've tried so many times," he muttered, his gaze fixed on the ground. "So many damn times. Calling upon the water... the earth. Nothing," he sighed, running a hand through his dark, dishevelled hair. "I get nothing, Raena."

"Who cares?" Raena elbowed him playfully, trying to sound light-hearted. "Magic is all out of whack anyway. You do well not to use it."

"But in situations of danger?" he snapped his gaze towards her. "It might be dangerous for you to use magic, Raena. They can smell the raw power in your royal bloodline. But if I had magic... I could have stopped that thing from hurting you. Instead, all I could do was shoot useless sticks at it."

"Hey," she growled. "They're not useless." Her expression softened, and she leaned her head against his shoulder. "And neither are you."

He didn't reply, but Raena was happy to sit there with him, as long as she wasn't alone. Braedon, although he could be annoyingly protective at times, made her feel safe and... not alone. She oftentimes suspected that he truly did have an undiscovered earth element within him, for when she was with him she sometimes felt calmer, and at this moment, as he slung an arm around her to give her shoulders a reassuring squeeze, all pain from her arm and leg momentarily ceased.

"I wish I could at least ease your pain," he sighed. "I wish I could do something."

Before Raena had a chance to reply that he actually did somehow, heavy footsteps sounded, and seconds later, Grandpa Sage came storming in, looking both flustered and exhausted.

Braedon shot up. "Did you find it?"

It only took Raena one glance at his clean-tipped arrows – twelve of them, and not a single one missing – for her to have her answer.

"Nothing," he replied solemnly, his knuckles white as he gripped that magnificent, slender bow of his. "The tracks showed that it wandered off into the stream, but after that, there are no more signs or clues as to what happened to that damned creature."

"You think it's run away?" Raena asked hopefully, foolishly.

Grandpa Sage shook his head, crushing what little optimism she had left. "It's still around. Where, though? I could not tell you. Even so, now that it's gotten a taste of you, it doesn't need to find you necessarily. You'll find it."

"In my dreams," Raena finished quietly, dreading the idea of seeing its animated, skeletal corpse once again.

Grandpa Sage let out a long sigh and rubbed his temples. His brown robes matched that of the fallen leaves outside, and his mud-brown boots had dried, autumn leaves and dirt stuck to them. Grey hair and white beard aside, the man had never looked older in his life as he glanced at Raena with those green, glimmering eyes of his, shame evident through the worry lines in his face. He headed towards one of his many shelves, searching through jars and tins until he picked up a glass jug containing what looked like dark strips of bark inside.

"These are strong caffeinated bark strips," he said, reading her questioning look. "Just half a stick will keep you up for hours."

"Grandpa..." Raena started, but he opened the jar and took one out, snapping one long strip in half and offering it to her.

"Please, Raena. I can't risk you falling asleep and facing that thing. I just need a bit more time to track it down and..."

"Grandpa," she tried again. "You've done everything you could. It's untraceable, let me..."

"No," he barked, before lowering his voice. "No, filia, I can't. I can't let you face that creature alone again."

"I'm not eating it," Raena jutted out her chin. "Let the draugr come, it wants a piece of me again? I'll show it who's in charge around here this time..."

"I said no, Raena!" He set down the glass jar harder than he meant, slamming the piece of bark strip onto the table. Both Braedon and Raena jumped a little. They had never seen Grandpa Sage lose his cool... not like this.

"I just..." he breathed in slowly, his nostrils flaring, and he turned to face Braedon. "Please, get her to understand."

He walked out of the room, snatching his bow from where he had left it propped against the table, and Raena looked to Braedon with an expression of clear bemusement.

"I can handle myself," she started.

"I know that."

"And he should know that better than anyone else!" she exclaimed.

Braedon was quiet for one, thoughtful beat. "I have no doubt he does."

Braedon shook his head at her, a look of pity on his face – but not for her, she realised. For Grandpa Sage.

"He's lost too much already, Raena. Don't you see that?" he said quietly, meeting her gaze.

"Okay, I get that," Raena started. She knew the story. His story.

"Everyone around him dies, Raena."

"I know," she replied quietly.

"That's got to affect a person. Mess with their head."

"I know, but still," she began.

"But still," he cut in, his eyes holding a melancholic glimmer to them. "I don't think you really understand what it's like to lose the people you love most, Raena. I mean really lose them. Watch them die... Just think," he chuckled, a humourless, empty sound. "He lost his own parents at a young age thanks to the Gods-damned Great War. Then, during those brief few years of peace, he finally finds a scrap of happiness – the love of his life, and that gets taken away from him not long after. And as if that wasn't enough, a few years after that, he loses his own son and daughter-in-law. The two people he was closest to after his wife."

"Okay, okay," Raena felt selfish for even having tried to protest. He was right. She didn't know that kind of pain. She could only imagine.

"He's got you, though," Raena offered quietly, though the fight had left her now, and her words sounded superficial.

"Don't you see that we're all he's got, though?" Braedon grimaced. "We're all he has left, Raena. If something happened to either one of us... I don't know if he'd have it in himself to mend his thrice broken heart."

Raena lowered her gaze to her booted feet, suppressing the guilt that pressed down on her chest. "It's not fair that he risks his life trying to save mine, though."

"He'd rather die himself than have to deal with yet another loss."

The two were quiet, the weight of Braedon's words too much for Raena to bear. She understood that losing someone must be hard. So, why couldn't either one of them see that that's why she had to face the creature alone? Why should someone else die when it was her fault she was in this mess in the first place?

"I didn't know he had lost his parents too," Raena murmured.

"There's a lot we both don't know about him," Braedon said with a sad smile.

Raena nodded slowly, keeping her gaze to the floor. "I'll eat the bark," she said with a heavy sigh.

She felt a warm hand on her shoulder, and she looked up at Braedon.

"Thank you," he said, and she nodded again.

"Can you get Grandpa Sage for me?" she asked. "I... I want to apologise to him. I'd go myself but my leg..."

"Sure." Braedon handed her the stick, giving her a reassuring wink. "You're doing the right thing, Rae."

He walked out of the room and Raena stood up, ignoring the voice in her head that warned her against what she was about to do.

The right thing. She was doing the right thing. They just didn't realise it yet. She would be doing Grandpa Sage a favour. What would happen if he did run into the draugr, after all? What could an elderly man – best archer or no – do against a creature that could increase in size at its own will? What if it bit him, too? Or Braedon?

She wasted no time as she located the crushed herbs Grandpa Sage kept ready for whenever she had trouble sleeping, and she grabbed a handful – well-aware that she was normally meant to have no more than a teaspoon, maximum. But she was going to make sure that she didn't wake up until she killed that creature for good.

It was easier to swallow with water but, hearing distant footsteps echoing towards the room, she swallowed the herbs, ignoring the scratching feeling as rough bits of rosemary pricked at her throat, and then lay down as an instant wave of dizziness struck her. Her head swirled and her vision blackened.

She was vaguely aware of two voices shouting, two blurred figures standing above her, shaking her shoulders. But she let the darkness fill both her vision and mind, reminding herself that everything would be okay.

She was doing the right thing.