Gandalf didn't even say goodbye.
He just pointed us at a rickety cart, gave the driver a nod, and walked off.
No "good luck."
No "try not to die."
Heh.
Perfect.
The guy's already writing us off.
The cart ride was its own special kind of hell.
First, we rolled through the capital, all glowing bridges and silver trees.
It was pretty, I guess, if you like places that scream, "You're poor."
Yael just stared out at it all, her face a block of stone.
"I hate this place," she said, not looking at me.
"Too clean."
"It's efficient," I said, leaning back on a sack of something that smelled like old socks.
"You hate anything that doesn't involve hitting it with a rock."
"Hitting things with a rock is a valid strategy," she grumbled.
"It's how we got here."
"No," I corrected her.
"Thinking is how we got here."
"You hit things with a rock because I told you which rock to hit."
She just grunted.
In Yael-speak, that means, "You're right, but I'd rather die than say it."
The city faded.
The silver trees turned into normal green ones, then the green ones got all thin and pathetic.
The grass went from green to a sad, brownish-yellow.
The air got colder.
It smelled like dust and failure.
"So this is the plan?" Yael finally asked.
"The King gives you a fancy title, and Gandalf sends us to the middle of nowhere to babysit a bunch of losers?"
"It's not babysitting," I said, scanning the horizon.
"It's a recruitment mission."
"You call this a recruitment mission?" she scoffed.
"This looks like where the world goes to die."
"He's testing us, Yael."
"He thinks I'm just a pretty face who got lucky."
"He's trying to break my pride before I even start."
"Well, is he wrong?" she shot back, her amethyst eyes flashing.
"You've led an army of one your whole life, Quinn."
"And I was your only soldier."
Ouch.
My "Echo of Sacrifice" flaw.
My need for a guardian.
For her.
That hit a little too close to home.
"This is different," I said, my voice tight.
"This isn't a game anymore."
"It never was for me," she said quietly.
The cart lurched to a stop.
"This is it," the driver grunted.
"The Brink."
The place was a dump.
A collection of saggy tents and crooked shacks huddled against a rock face like they were hiding from the wind.
And the wind never stopped.
It just whined and scraped at your nerves.
There was no color here.
Everything was brown.
The dirt, the rocks, the tents… even the elves.
They were ghosts, scattered around, doing nothing.
Just staring at the dirt.
They were thin, their clothes were rags.
This wasn't an outpost.
It was a grave for the living.
"The King's garbage," Yael whispered.
I was thinking "vendor trash," but sure.
We hopped down.
The driver didn't wait, just turned the cart around and left us in a cloud of dust.
A few elves looked up.
No curiosity.
Just a dull, tired look that said, "Oh, look."
"More trash."
Okay, time to switch on the old raid-leader brain.
This was a problem.
A big one.
Morale: zero.
Stats: probably in the toilet.
But I had a title.
I had a royal decree.
That had to count for something.
I found a big, flat rock—my stage—and hopped on top.
"Listen up!" I yelled, my voice booming.
It was a good voice.
Commanding.
A few more heads turned.
Not many.
"My name is Quinn!" I declared.
"By order of His Majesty, King Theron, I am here to offer you a choice!"
I paused for dramatic effect.
Nothing.
Just the wind.
"The King has authorized the creation of a new unit," I pushed on.
"An elite company!"
"And I have been named its commander!"
"I am here to recruit!"
I held up the scroll with the fancy royal seal.
"This is your chance to leave this place!"
"A chance to serve!"
"A chance to have a purpose again!"
My voice was filled with all the charisma I could muster.
This was a good speech.
The kind that starts a rebellion in the games.
Here, it got nothing.
Then, a low chuckle started from the back.
A dry, rattling sound.
Soon, others joined in.
It was the hollow, broken laughter of people with nothing left to lose.
"A purpose?" one of them croaked.
"Our purpose is to die here, stranger."
"The King doesn't remember we exist," another said.
"This is just another cruel joke."
My Weaponized Charm, the thing that had made a whole village of elves fall all over themselves, just… died.
It was like trying to set water on fire.
My face burned.
I just stood there on my stupid rock, completely and utterly owned before I'd even started.
Yael just stood at the bottom, arms crossed, a grim look on her face.
She didn't have to say, "I told you so."
I got down from the rock.
"Plan B?" she asked quietly.
"Working on it," I snarled.
My eyes swept over the crowd again.
But this time, I wasn't looking for followers.
I was looking for assets.
My gamer brain took over, scanning, analyzing, looking for anything that didn't fit the pattern.
And then I saw her.
She was standing near the back, half-hidden in the shadow of a tent.
Thin, ragged clothes, just like the rest.
But she was different.
Everyone else was slumped over.
She was standing straight.
Shoulders back, chin up.
A military posture she was trying to hide.
Her eyes weren't empty.
They were sharp.
Intelligent.
And they were looking right at me with cold, analytical contempt.
She wasn't hopeless.
She was furious.
An anomaly.
A high-value asset hidden among the vendor trash.
I started walking toward her.
Yael fell in beside me.
"What?"
"Her," I said, nodding.
"She's different."
She watched us approach, her expression never changing.
I stopped a few feet away.
"I'm Quinn," I said, giving her the full-force charming smile that was supposed to make people swoon.
She didn't swoon.
She just stared at me, unimpressed.
"I know," she said, her voice flat.
"I heard your little speech."
"Very inspiring."
The sarcasm was a physical slap in the face.
"You're not like the others," I said, dropping the smile.
"You haven't given up."
"Giving up is a luxury," she replied.
"Some of us are too angry to afford it."
"Good," I said.
"Anger is a resource."
"I can use that."
Her eyes narrowed.
"You think you can use me?"
"You walk in here with your clean clothes and your fancy title and think you can command us?"
"You're just another pretty face the King sent to die."
She looked me up and down, and for the first time, I felt like someone was seeing right through the high Charisma stat and seeing the scared, angry person underneath.
And she wasn't impressed with that, either.
"This place breaks people, Commander," she said, spitting my title like it was poison.
"Come back in a week."
"You'll be staring at the dirt just like the rest of them."
With that, she turned and walked away.
I just stood there, speechless.
"Well," Yael said from beside me.
"That went well."
"She's the key," I muttered, my mind racing.
"If I can get her, I can get the others."
"Looks to me like she doesn't want to be gotten," Yael said.
Just then, a weak cough came from nearby.
An old elf, thin as a skeleton, was looking at us.
"It won't matter," he rasped.
"None of it."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"The Scrabblers will come tonight," he whispered.
"They always do."
"The Scrabblers?" Yael asked.
"The beasts," he said, pointing a shaky finger at the canyons.
"They own the water hole."
"We're too weak to fight them."
"Every night, they take one or two of us."
He looked back at the dirt.
"Soon, there will be none of us left."
He shuffled away.
A pack of mobs was picking off the camp's residents one by one.
Authority had failed me.
Charm had failed me.
The camp was dying.
I looked from the hopeless faces around me to the dark canyon where the beasts lived.
And I grinned.
Finally.
A problem you can solve.