A true Lifekeeper is always observant, even in little things. Especially in little things. And Juel was a true Lifekeeper. He noticed that Milian had brought his idea to Orion and not him. That would not do. It was time to start setting things right.

“Good job, man!” Juel patted Milian on the shoulder, hoping that the praise sounded as sincere as he wanted. “Just one thing: in the future, if you have something important to say, come to me first. Keeping the leader uninformed can be dangerous to the whole team.”

“Okay,” Milian shrugged. “Whatever you say…”

“Jarmin!” Juel turned to the little boy. “I want to apologise for that joke I made yesterday. It was stupid. Please, forgive me.”

He said no more, leaving his companions to their thoughts. While the whole gradient of moods and opinions was shifting and rearranging behind his back, Juel grabbed his backpack from the pile, unrolled his sleeping bag, and started preparing for the night. He knew he was doing the right thing now, both for the mission’s and his own sake. Juel had hated Sainar’s decision to send him on this very questionable journey with a bunch of children. Now, he had finally made peace with that.

“Those guys are not all that bad,” he told himself. “They’re all my brothers of the Order. They’re all warriors, even the youngest ones. Maybe even little Jarmin is worth something, we’ll see; he is a powerful ambasiath too, after all… As to me, my master has always said that I must learn to keep my pride in check. All right, I will. Trust can be powerful, so let’s make them trust their leader.”

The wayfarer soup the young Lifekeepers had for dinner tasted like a proper homemade meal with Bala’s spices and Irin’s birds thrown in. The rain did finally start and quenched the campfire but, luckily, the diadem tent turned out to be a good enough shelter that kept both water and wind away.

Soon, night swallowed the world outside the tent; rain swallowed the sounds that could warn you about a danger. From time to time, a cold water droplet or a wet purple-white petal fell from the tent’s roof on the boys sleeping below. Sleeping. Jarmin no longer felt safe among them when there was no one to look out for danger. He felt alone and painfully vulnerable now. The No Man’s Land with all the nightmarish creatures Oasis had been talking about that day was close. Even worse: Kosta had mentioned that some of them – moroks – can wander outside the unstable lands and attack travellers even beyond Firaska. What if one – or a whole pack of them! – was prowling about the grasslands or maybe even lurking outside the tent right now?

Jarmin sat and wrapped his blanket around himself, shivering. He was so scared already that Orion’s unexpected whisper had almost made him jump.

“Can’t sleep, Jarmin?” asked Orion and added, looking around, “Well, you’re not alone. Looks like we’re all awake.”

One after the other, the boys raised their shaggy heads and exchanged looks in the dark.

“I’ve never been so close to the No Man’s Land,” whispered Kosta. His voice sounded even worse now when the air was cold and damp. “I know that it’s a rare thing that some dark creature sneaks beyond Firaskian patrols but it’s not impossible.”

“Orion…” said Jarmin with a pitiful sniff. “What are moroks like?”

“Oh no, no scary stories in the nighttime!” answered Orion with a nervous laugh. “That would be bad for the team’s morale.”

“Okay… But maybe you can tell me a fun story then?”

The pure hope in little Jarmin’s voice was too touching for him to refuse.