The Living and the Dead

"They don't tell you about the choices grief forces on you—the moment someone hands you a deadline and asks which love matters more, as if love can be ranked like entries on a fucking list."

The camp stirred to life around me like a world that hadn't received the memo about everything being ruined. Murmurs of conversation drifted across the dust, the ordinary sounds of people waking and beginning their days—as if days still mattered, as if routine still had meaning, as if Duke wasn't lying cold and still in my arms while the sun had the audacity to keep rising.

People passed by the riverbank where I sat, their footsteps slowing as they registered the tableau we presented. Henri pressed against my side, Duke cradled in my lap, both of us wrapped in a silence so absolute it seemed to create its own barrier. I felt their glances—curious, sympathetic, uncertain—but none of them breached the perimeter of our grief. Whatever they saw in my face, whatever desolation radiated from the shape we made against the morning light, it was enough to keep them at a distance.

Good. Stay away. All of you just stay the fuck away.

The anger had settled into something colder overnight, something that felt less like fire and more like ice. It sat in my chest like a frozen stone, numbing everything it touched. The tears had stopped hours ago, leaving behind a terrible clarity that I didn't want and couldn't escape.

Then I felt it—a presence approaching with a familiarity that made my muscles tense before conscious thought could form. I didn't need to look up. I knew that gait, knew the particular way Luke's footsteps sounded on Clivilius dust, knew the hesitation in his approach that spoke of guilt and concern and all the other emotions I couldn't bear to witness.

"Go away, Luke."

The words emerged flat and cold, a warning wrapped in exhaustion. I kept my eyes fixed on Duke's fur, on the particular shade of brown that caught the morning light, on anything except the man who'd brought us to this place.

Luke stopped. The silence between us stretched taut, loaded with everything we weren't saying—years of partnership and conflict, love and resentment, the complicated history that had somehow led us both to this riverbank where my dog lay dead and my son was somewhere in a tent and nothing would ever be the same again.

"Jamie... I'm so..."

The beginning of an apology. The fucking audacity of an apology.

"I said go away, Luke."

My voice sharpened, finding edges I hadn't known it possessed. The mere suggestion of his remorse felt like salt in an open wound, a mockery of the depth of what I'd lost. What could sorry possibly accomplish? What words could bridge the chasm between his guilt and my grief?

But Luke didn't leave. Instead, I heard him move closer, felt his presence entering the space I'd claimed for mourning. He crouched beside us—beside me and Henri and Duke's body—and reached out as if to touch the dog who'd been ours, once, before everything shattered.

The sight of his hand extending toward Duke's fur broke something in me.

"Fuck off, Luke!"

The words exploded from my throat with a force that surprised even me, a raw burst of anguish and accusation that had been building pressure all night. I turned to face him finally, and I knew what he saw—eyes swollen and red, cheeks stained with the tracks of tears that had carved channels through the dust coating my skin, a face contorted by grief that had curdled into something uglier.

"This is all your fault. You don't fucking deserve to touch him. Ever!"

Luke reeled backward as if I'd struck him physically, his body flinching from the force of my words. The vulnerability that crossed his face—the naked hurt, the tears already forming in his own eyes—should have softened something in me. Once, it would have. Once, seeing Luke in pain would have triggered every protective instinct I possessed.

Now it only fed the cold thing living in my chest.

"I didn't mean for any of this to happen."

His voice was barely a whisper, cracked and pleading. His eyes sought mine with desperate need for connection, for understanding, for some acknowledgement that we were still us despite everything.

"It's too fucking late for sorry."

The bitterness in my voice could have stripped paint. I turned away from him, dismissing him with a finality that felt like slamming a door, like burning a bridge, like all the violent metaphors for ending things that language had ever invented.

"Just fuck off, Luke. Please."

The last word came out broken, my defiance crumbling into something closer to exhaustion. I bowed my head lower over Duke's body, surrendering to the solitary act of mourning that had become my entire world. I couldn't look at Luke anymore. Couldn't bear witness to whatever pain my words had caused. Couldn't summon the energy to care about anything except the weight in my lap and the emptiness in my chest.

I felt Luke's gaze on me for a long moment—felt the weight of it like a physical pressure against my back. Then, finally, footsteps retreating. The sound of him walking away, leaving me alone with my grief and my anger and the corpse of a dog who had loved me better than I deserved.

Why the fuck can't these people just leave us alone?

The thought roared through my mind as another set of footsteps approached, hesitant and careful but unmistakably directed toward my position. The sound grated against nerves already frayed beyond repair. I wanted to scream at whoever it was, to command them to vanish, to erect walls of fury so high that no one would ever attempt to breach them again.

But the exhaustion had claimed too much of me. I couldn't even lift my head in defiance.

The footsteps slowed, stopped. A gasp—loud and sharp and loaded with genuine shock—pierced the morning air.

Beatrix?

The name surfaced through my fog of grief, recognition triggering a fresh surge of anger. What the fuck was Luke doing? What the fuck is Beatrix doing here?

"Is he—"

The question fractured before Beatrix could finish it, her voice breaking under the weight of what she couldn't bring herself to ask. I heard her knees hit the dust beside me, felt the impact of her sudden collapse.

My gaze shifted toward her, moving through air that felt thick as water. My eyes were so swollen, so raw from crying, that the world had taken on a blurred quality—edges softened, details obscured, everything filtered through the lens of exhausted grief. But I could see enough to recognise her face, to read the devastation that was spreading across her features as she took in the scene before her.

I didn't answer her half-formed question. My hand continued its journey across Duke's matted fur, a repetitive motion that had become the only thing anchoring me to reality.

Then Beatrix did something I hadn't expected.

She wrapped her arms around me.

The embrace was sudden and fierce, her body pressing against mine with a desperation that seemed to draw from the same well of sorrow I'd been drowning in all night. Her shoulders heaved, her composure shattering as sobs escaped her—raw sounds that matched the ugliness of my own grief.

The barriers I'd built—those careful walls of ice and anger and isolation—crumbled under the weight of her embrace. Beatrix wasn't trying to fix anything, wasn't offering platitudes or solutions or the kind of hollow comfort that only makes loss feel more acute. She was simply there, sharing the weight of what couldn't be borne alone.

Her warmth seeped through my cold, damp clothes. Her tears dampened my shoulder. And somewhere in the tangle of our shared grief, I found myself breathing again—actually breathing, rather than the shallow gasps that had been all I could manage for hours.

We stayed like that for what felt like eternity. Two people clinging to each other in the face of something too large to face alone. When I finally registered the jagged cuts marring Beatrix's arm—evidence of her own ordeal during the night's chaos—a silent understanding passed between us. We were both wounded. Both scarred by this place and what it had taken from us.

When Beatrix finally released me, she did so with visible reluctance, as if breaking physical contact might sever the connection we'd forged. She shifted position, her posture carrying both determination and sorrow, and reached out toward Duke. Her fingers brushed his fur with a gentleness that spoke of genuine love—not just sympathy for my loss, but her own relationship with this dog who'd been part of our extended family.

I watched her touch him, and something in my chest that had been frozen began to crack.

"I'm going to get whatever did this."

The words emerged from somewhere deep, surprising me with their clarity. They weren't a statement of grief—they were a declaration of intent. A vow that had been forming all night, crystallising in the cold hours while I'd held Duke's body and waited for a dawn that couldn't make anything better.

Beatrix's hand paused on Duke's fur. "Do you think it was a shadow panther?"

"A what?"

Confusion cut through my resolve, the unfamiliar term jarring me from the singular focus of vengeance.

"A shadow panther." Beatrix's hand moved absently to the wounds on her arm, rubbing at the jagged cuts that marked her skin. "It's the creature that attacked me last night."

Before I could process this new information—before I could fit 'shadow panther' into my mental framework of threats and enemies—another voice entered the conversation. Confident, authoritative, belonging to no one I recognised.

"It wasn't a shadow panther."

Beatrix and I turned in unison toward the source. A woman stood at the edge of our mourning space, her bearing suggesting military training and her expression carrying the detached assessment of someone accustomed to violence. Everything about her spoke of capability, of experience with death that went far beyond losing a beloved pet.

"I'm Charity."

The introduction was perfunctory, a necessary formality before more important matters.

"How do you know that it wasn't a shadow panther?"

My question came out sharper than intended, scepticism warring with desperate need for answers. This stranger had appeared from nowhere, inserting herself into my grief with claims of knowledge she had no obvious way of possessing.

Charity's gaze dropped to Duke's body, her expression shifting into something more clinical. "May I?"

The request—seeking permission before approaching Duke—was a gesture of respect I hadn't expected. Something in her careful formality eased a fraction of my defensive hostility. After a moment's hesitation, I gave a reluctant nod.

Henri had been silent throughout Beatrix's arrival and the stranger's approach, but now a low growl rumbled from his chest as Charity moved closer. Before he could escalate to something more aggressive, a loud clattering from the direction of the campfire seized his attention. His ears perked, his head swivelled, and his short legs carried him away from us with a speed that seemed disproportionate to his compact body.

He stopped near the tent, looking back at us with an expression that almost seemed to be seeking permission—or perhaps checking whether Duke would follow.

Then Henri was gone, disappeared in pursuit of whatever breakfast opportunity had presented itself.

My heart cracked open all over again.

Henri had never been the brightest dog. Of either of them, really. Of any dog I'd ever known, if I was being honest. Despite the weight crushing my chest, I felt a half-smile crease my face—a reflexive response to Henri's uncomplicated priorities. He knew something was wrong with Duke. He'd been nudging and kissing his brother all night, mourning in whatever way dogs mourn. But the prospect of food had overridden his grief with the same simple logic that governed his entire existence.

Stomach first. Everything else second.

The thought triggered a memory—a lighter time, a different world. The smoke detector shrieking, the kitchen filling with acrid clouds from an overcooked roast, Luke and I scrambling to open windows and wave towels at the sensors. Duke had retreated immediately, his sensible nature recognising danger and responding with appropriate caution. He'd stationed himself on the back deck, waiting with an expression of patient disapproval.

Henri had charged toward the oven.

Not away from the smoke, not toward safety, but directly at the source of his curiosity. The billowing clouds, the shrieking alarm, the general chaos—none of it had registered as threat. All Henri had perceived was interesting thing happening near food.

At least we know who would survive, Luke had laughed, once the crisis had passed and we'd scraped the charred remains of dinner into the bin. I'd laughed too, marvelling at Henri's unfailing ability to prioritise his stomach over his safety.

The memory, so full of warmth and partnership and shared amusement, felt like a relic from a civilisation that had collapsed. Its brightness only made the present darkness more absolute.

I looked down at Duke—motionless, silent, forever still—and the weight of his absence pressed against my chest with crushing force. Survival wasn't a joke anymore. It wasn't a lighthearted observation about canine personality differences. It was a gaping wound in my world, a brutal reminder that Duke hadn't survived, that all his sensibility and caution had counted for nothing when something deadly had found him in the darkness.

Charity had squatted beside me during my moment of painful reminiscence, her proximity feeling invasive even as I understood its necessity. She reached for Duke with hands that moved with professional purpose, and I made myself allow it—made myself watch as she shifted his body to expose the wound that had killed him.

Her fingers brushed aside the matted fur, revealing the gash in his belly. I'd seen it before, had felt it in the darkness while his blood soaked into my arms, but seeing it now in daylight—the clean edges, the precision of the cut—felt like a fresh violation.

"See the edges around the wound?"

Charity's voice had gone clinical, detached in a way that scraped against my grief like sandpaper on raw skin. She didn't wait for my response before continuing.

"It's too clean to have been caused by any claw or tooth."

The implication took a moment to penetrate my exhausted brain. Too clean. Not a creature's attack. Something else.

"Then what was it?" Beatrix voiced the question before I could.

"Looking at the discolouration of the skin, my best guess is that it was an Okaledian dagger that killed the creature."

Creature.

The word hit me like a physical blow, disgust rising in my throat like bile.

"Creature?" I couldn't hide the revulsion in my voice, my heart recoiling from her casual phrasing. "His name is Duke."

The need to defend him—to assert his identity, his importance, his place in my life—surged through me with desperate force. He wasn't just some animal, some 'creature' to be catalogued and dismissed. He was family. He was mine.

"You do know he is a dog, don't you?" Beatrix's interjection carried incredulity, a challenge to Charity's apparent ignorance of what should have been obvious.

Charity's response was strange, her eyes narrowing as she continued her examination of Duke's wound. "I've seen similar creatures... dogs, like yours, but nothing quite like it. Creatures like this aren't so common in Chewbathia."

Chewbathia.

Another foreign word, another reminder that this dimension contained depths I hadn't begun to fathom. My head throbbed, each pulse amplifying the confusion and disbelief swirling through my exhausted mind. We'd been dropped into a world we didn't understand, facing threats we couldn't identify, and now this stranger was casually referencing places and concepts that made our situation feel even more surreal.

"I feel like my brain suddenly has another dozen questions after that."

Beatrix's voice carried the particular weariness of someone who'd reached the limits of their capacity for new information. She rose to her feet, the movement carrying both exhaustion and resignation.

"So do I."

I rubbed my forehead absently, and felt something wet and sticky transfer from my hand to my skin. Duke's blood—still present, still marking me despite hours of sitting by the river. The physical reminder of his death added another layer to the unreality pressing in from all sides.

But one question forced its way to the surface, demanding voice despite my fractured state. I looked between Beatrix and Charity, the tension in the air thick enough to cut.

"But, if Duke was killed by a dagger, then who the fuck was wielding it?"

The question hung between us, its implications spreading like poison through water.

Beatrix gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. "Do you think somebody in the camp killed Duke?"

The horror in her whispered question gave voice to the fear I hadn't dared articulate—that the threat wasn't external, that we'd been harbouring a murderer among us all along.

"Nobody that you know."

Charity's response was cryptic, offering clarity while simultaneously deepening the mystery.

"There's someone here that we don't know?"

Beatrix and I spoke almost simultaneously, our voices carrying the same note of alarm. The realisation that our camp wasn't as isolated as we'd believed, that unknown entities might be moving among us unseen, sent ice cascading down my spine.

"A Portal pirate."

Paul's voice announced his arrival, interjecting himself into our conversation with an air of confidence that suggested he understood more about our situation than his previous behaviour had indicated.

"What the actual fuck?"

The words escaped me before I could filter them, my incredulity a mirror of the disbelief flickering across Beatrix's features. Portal pirates. Shadow panthers. Okaledian daggers. Chewbathia. Each new term was another brick in a wall of incomprehension that threatened to collapse and bury me entirely.

Charity took it upon herself to elaborate, her explanation painting a picture that made our unseen enemy terrifyingly real.

"He's likely lost and been separated from his partner. Some danger must have befallen one of them before they could execute the location registration. They're always in pairs. Never work alone. Cunning and violent bastards when they're together. But alone, they can be brute savages. Their instinct for hunting and survival runs deep."

Each word added weight to the dread coiling in my stomach. The idea of a Portal pirate—cunning, savage, operating on instincts honed for violence—as the architect of Duke's death was a horror I hadn't been prepared to contemplate. We weren't just dealing with alien creatures and hostile wilderness. We were caught in the crossfire of conflicts that predated our arrival by millennia.

"Charity managed to kill one of the beasts last night. It's at the camp if you want to see it."

Paul's words carried an enthusiasm that felt grotesquely misplaced, as if trophy hunting was an appropriate response to the night's devastation. I had no desire to view the creature's corpse, my mind too entrenched in my own loss to find satisfaction in retribution delivered by someone else's hand.

"She wounded another and it appears, somehow, that a third shadow panther managed to follow Beatrix through the Portal to Earth."

The revelation spun my head around, a spark of desperate hope flaring in my chest. A path back to Earth. A way out of this nightmare dimension that had claimed my dog and trapped me in circumstances I'd never chosen.

But Charity extinguished that spark before it could fully catch.

"It doesn't change anything for you."

Her hand landed on my shoulder, grounding me back to reality with a weight that felt almost compassionate.

"You'll never leave Clivilius alive."

The finality of her statement was a physical blow, driving breath from my lungs. Never leave. Trapped here forever. This hostile dimension that had killed Duke was now my permanent prison.

"But I think Duke can."

Paul's suggestion cut through my despair, redirecting my attention to a possibility I hadn't considered.

"You could have Luke take him to be buried on Earth?"

The mere thought of it—Duke's body being handed over to Luke, carried through a Portal I could never follow, buried in a world I would never see again—ignited fury so intense my vision actually narrowed.

"Fuck no!"

The words exploded from me, raw and vehement. The idea of Duke being taken away, of surrendering his remains to the man I blamed for bringing us here, of being unable to visit his grave or maintain any connection to his memory—it was unbearable. Unacceptable.

"It's not fair on Henri. Duke belongs here now. We'll find a suitable place to bury him here, today."

My declaration was as much about preserving control as honouring Duke's memory. So much had been taken from me without consent. This, at least, I could decide. This small thing, I could hold onto.

Paul fell silent, nodding his acknowledgement of my outburst with the wariness of someone who'd learned not to push certain boundaries.

But Charity had no such compunction.

"That's not possible to bury him."

Her words were blunt, practical, utterly devoid of the emotional weight I needed her to acknowledge.

"You have no walls, no protection. Burying him will only attract creatures much worse than shadow panthers and Portal pirates."

The picture she painted was grim—Duke's body becoming bait, drawing predators to our vulnerable camp, his remains desecrated by things I couldn't even imagine. The thought was a violation almost worse than his death itself.

"What do we do then?"

Paul's question hung in the air, tentative and uncertain.

"You'll need to cremate his body."

The word 'cremate' landed like a punch to the gut. Burn him. Reduce Duke to ash, to nothing, to smoke that would dissipate into this alien sky and leave no trace that he'd ever existed.

"Like fuck we will!"

The response was visceral, propelling me to my feet with Duke clutched protectively against my chest. My legs screamed after hours of immobility, but I barely noticed the pain.

"Don't worry, Duke."

I leaned close to him, my lips near his ear as if he could still hear me, as if my promises still mattered to whatever remained of who he'd been.

"I won't let them destroy any trace that you ever existed."

The vow was whispered, private, a covenant between us that transcended the logical impossibility of communication with the dead.

Paul approached carefully, his movements telegraphing non-threat in the way you'd approach a wounded animal.

"Jamie, we don't have a lot of options here."

His gesture encompassed our surroundings—the exposed riverbank, the distant tents, the vast emptiness of Clivilius stretching to horizons that offered no shelter, no safety, no civilisation.

"No."

My refusal was absolute, a line drawn in dust that might as well have been carved in stone.

"We're not burning Duke."

The words were final. Non-negotiable. Whatever else this place took from me, it would not take this.

"Has anyone seen Joel this morning?"

Glenda's voice shattered whatever fragile equilibrium had been forming, her words carrying a crack of panic that cut through everything else.

The question hit me like a bucket of ice water. Joel. My son. The boy I'd barely begun to know, who'd died and been resurrected, who'd been singing mysterious songs around the campfire just yesterday. In my all-consuming focus on Duke, I'd lost track of everything else—including the other member of my family who needed protection.

Beatrix responded first, confirming she'd been with me at the riverbank.

Paul's assumption that Joel might still be resting offered temporary comfort.

Then Glenda's single word demolished it: "No."

The ground seemed to shift beneath my feet. The physical toll of holding Duke, combined with hours of emotional devastation, combined with this fresh wave of terror—it overwhelmed the fragile structure that had been keeping me upright. My knees buckled, sending me crashing toward the dust, my grip on Duke the only thing I managed to maintain as the world tilted sideways.

"Jamie!"

Multiple voices called my name, multiple sets of hands reaching to steady me, but they felt distant—sounds and sensations filtered through cotton, through water, through the growing darkness that pressed in from the edges of my vision.

Glenda was beside me suddenly, her voice carrying the crisp authority of someone accustomed to managing crises.

"Paul, gather everyone at the campfire."

The words barely registered. My world had narrowed to two impossible truths: Duke was dead, and Joel was missing.

My dog is gone. My son is gone. Everything I came here with, everything I've tried to protect—gone, gone, gone.

Introductions happened around me—Beatrix meeting Glenda, names exchanged, the social rituals of civilisation continuing despite the apocalypse unfolding in my chest. Glenda's determination to find something to wrap Duke in, her instruction for Beatrix to help me clean up—these penetrated my consciousness as distant echoes, barely connected to the person I'd been before this morning.

Beatrix's voice, close and gentle: "Come on, let's get you clean."

Her departure to fetch fresh clothes. Someone else would guide her—Paul or Glenda, it didn't matter, nothing mattered except the weight in my arms and the absence in my heart and the terror for what might have happened to Joel.

I turned my gaze back to the river. Its surface reflected nothing but sky—no answers, no comfort, no magical solutions. Just water flowing past, indifferent to human suffering, carrying away nothing but dust and time.

Clean clothes felt wrong. The warmth of fresh fabric against my skin, the absence of Duke's blood on my arms—it felt like betrayal, like washing away evidence of what had happened, like pretending things could return to normal when normal no longer existed.

But I'd done it. Let Beatrix guide me through the motions of self-care, accepted the clothes she'd brought, emerged from the haze of grief looking less like a blood-soaked madman and more like a functioning human being.

Appearances were lies. I was neither functional nor human. I was a hollow shell animated by grief and terror and the cold determination that had crystallised overnight.

Now I knelt beside Duke once more, the large bedsheet Beatrix had included spread on the ground before me. The fabric was clean and white, incongruous against the red dust of Clivilius—a piece of Earth-normal domesticity that had somehow followed us into this alien nightmare.

Lifting Duke felt monumental. His body had stiffened slightly during the hours since his death, his familiar weight distributed differently now, his limbs holding positions they never would have held in life. I placed him on the sheet with a gentleness that approached reverence, positioning him as if he were merely sleeping, as if the careful arrangement of his body might somehow matter to whatever remained of who he'd been.

Each fold of the sheet was deliberate. A caress. A protection. A ceremony performed without witnesses, without ritual, without anything except the love I was trying to express through the simple act of wrapping.

Tears burned behind my eyes, fighting against the walls I'd erected to contain them. The sting was a physical presence, a constant pressure that demanded release I couldn't afford. This moment required my composure. This moment demanded that I honour Duke with dignity, not dissolve into the sobbing mess I'd been for most of the night.

Fold by fold, I wrapped him. Each layer of fabric was a tangible expression of everything I couldn't say—the gratitude for years of uncomplicated love, the apology for failing to protect him, the promise that he wouldn't be forgotten even if I never saw Earth again.

By the time I finished, Duke was cocooned in white, a small, still package that contained everything I'd lost. The shape was peaceful. Gentle. Nothing like the violence that had ended his life, nothing like the chaos that had preceded his death.

In this moment, wrapped in my care, Duke had been granted a dignity that Clivilius had denied him in life.

The tears came anyway. Silent streams that I couldn't stop and eventually stopped trying to. They fell onto the sheet, small dark spots that spread through the fabric like reverse stars—evidence of grief that no amount of composure could entirely contain.

The camp fell silent as I approached the fire, conversations dying mid-sentence as attention shifted to me and the burden I carried. Duke's wrapped form in my arms was a visual statement that required no explanation—everyone present understood what the white fabric contained.

I should have felt their sympathy. Should have registered their shared sorrow, their attempts to offer comfort through respectful silence. But the only thing I felt was the cold weight of what I was holding and the colder weight of what I didn't know.

Where was Joel?

"Jamie."

Paul's voice was careful, carrying the hesitance of someone approaching a situation that might explode at any moment.

"I know things are a bit painful right now, but we need to know when you last saw Joel."

The question yanked me back from the precipice of dissociation, anchoring me to practical concerns that existed outside my grief. Joel. Missing. They needed information, needed to reconstruct a timeline, needed my help even though helping felt impossible.

Guilt stabbed through me—sharp, immediate, devastating. In my obsession with Duke, I'd forgotten about Joel. My son. The boy I'd just discovered, just begun to know, just started building a relationship with. I'd been so consumed by one loss that I'd failed to prevent another.

"It was just before the attack last night."

The words emerged heavy with regret, each syllable an admission of failure.

"He was in his bed in the tent when I took off after Duke."

When I chose the dog over my son. When I ran into darkness chasing one love and left another unprotected.

"And when you returned?"

Paul's follow-up was delivered with delicate care, as if he understood the weight of what he was asking.

I couldn't answer. The guilt of not being there, of not checking on Joel when I'd returned to the camp with Duke, of hours spent focused on grief while my son had apparently vanished—it rendered me speechless. My response was a shrug, helpless and defeated.

"Then it's settled."

Glenda's voice carried nervous tension, her arms crossed against her chest as if creating a barrier against the truth she was about to articulate.

"Joel is missing."

The words were stark. Final. A reality that compounded the agony of Duke's death with the terrifying uncertainty of Joel's fate.

But Charity's voice cut through the despair with the sharp clarity of someone accustomed to action.

"I am certain Joel has been taken by the Portal pirate. I will hunt him down and bring Joel back."

The declaration was a lifeline thrown into drowning waters. Someone knew what had happened. Someone had a plan. Someone was going to do something besides stand around the ashes of my life offering sympathetic glances.

"I'm coming with you."

The words left my mouth before my brain had finished processing them, urgency overriding any consideration of logistics or capability. Joel was out there somewhere, taken by a savage hunter, and every second we spent discussing the situation was a second he was getting further away.

Charity met my eyes, assessing. Whatever she saw there seemed to satisfy her requirements, because she nodded once—a sharp, military acknowledgement of my commitment.

"Prepare your things. We leave immediately."

No discussion. No debate. Just the clear directive of someone who understood that time was the one resource we couldn't afford to waste.

Immediately.

The word echoed through me as I looked down at Duke. The white bundle in my arms, the physical weight of loss that I'd been carrying since dawn, suddenly became an impossible problem with no solution.

I couldn't take Duke with me. Couldn't carry his body through whatever pursuit Charity was proposing. But the thought of leaving him—of setting down this last physical connection and walking away—was a torture I hadn't prepared myself to face.

A new kind of terror washed over me, different from the grief that had been my constant companion since the river. This was the terror of choice. The realisation that I couldn't honour Duke and save Joel simultaneously. That one love would have to be sacrificed for another.

Charity approached, her hand finding my chin, lifting my gaze to meet hers with a directness that brooked no evasion.

"If you want any chance of finding Joel alive, we must leave immediately."

Her words were not cruel, but they were uncompromising. The reality of our situation left no room for the luxury of extended mourning.

"I need to say farewell to Duke first."

The plea emerged desperate, clinging to a hope that there might be some middle ground, some way to honour both loves without betraying either.

"Life is full of decisions and consequences, Jamie."

Charity's gaze didn't waver, her voice carrying the weight of someone who'd faced similar choices and understood their cost.

"You need to make a choice: Joel or Duke."

The question stripped everything else away. All the complicated emotions, all the competing loyalties, all the grief and anger and terror—none of it mattered in the face of this brutal binary.

My dog, already dead, whose body I could hold and honour and eventually lay to rest.

Or my son, possibly still alive, whose survival might depend on decisions I made in the next few seconds.

It wasn't really a choice at all. However much it destroyed me to acknowledge it, the living had to take precedence over the dead.

But knowing that didn't make the decision any easier. Didn't lessen the agony of what I was about to do.

The weight of every gaze at the campfire pressed against me, dozens of eyes waiting for a verdict that would determine not just my immediate future but the kind of person I was willing to be. The silence stretched, filled only by the crackle of the fire and the distant sounds of a camp that continued to exist despite everything that had shattered within it.

Finally—after an eternity that probably lasted only seconds—I turned toward Beatrix. The nod I gave her was small, almost imperceptible, but it carried the weight of surrender.

Beatrix approached slowly, her respect for the moment evident in every careful step. As she reached for Duke, her hands gentle against the white fabric, a tear traced its way down her cheek.

"Duke knows you love him, Jamie. He won't ever forget that."

Her words were a gift—an acknowledgement that what I was doing wasn't abandonment, wasn't betrayal, wasn't the rejection it felt like. Duke had known he was loved. Whatever remained of him, wherever dogs went when their bodies stopped working, that love had been real and he had felt it.

My lips quivered as tears breached every defence I'd constructed, marking my cheeks with their heat. I lowered my head to the white bundle, pressing a final kiss against the fabric where Duke's head rested beneath.

"I'm so sorry, Duke."

The words were barely audible, meant for him and him alone. An apology for everything—for failing to protect him, for not being able to save him, for choosing to walk away now when every instinct screamed to stay.

Then I made myself let go.

Beatrix accepted Duke's body with the reverence it deserved, cradling him against her chest as I forced myself to step back, to create distance that felt like cutting off a limb.

"I'll grab my things."

The words emerged directed at Charity, my voice finding something that resembled determination despite the destruction happening inside my chest. I moved toward the tent with steps that felt leaden, each one carrying me further from Duke and closer to a future that had nothing left in it but fear and purpose.

At the tent's entrance, I paused. Looked back.

The group had drawn together in my absence, a tight cluster of shared sorrow and solidarity. Even Lois and Henri were there, the dogs having sensed the shift in atmosphere and sought the comfort of the collective. Henri sat at the edge of the group, his small body pointed in my direction, his eyes fixed on me with an expression I couldn't read.

He doesn't understand. Doesn't know why I'm leaving, why I gave Duke to someone else, why everything has changed.

"Take good care of Henri for me."

The request was both plea and command, my voice carrying a blend of vulnerability I couldn't hide.

"We'll keep him safe, Jamie. You have my word."

Paul's response was immediate, his arms wrapping around Henri. The gesture provided a sliver of comfort in the darkness that had consumed everything else.

Inside the tent, I moved without thought. Hands grabbing items, shoving them into a pack, performing the motions of preparation while my mind remained locked on the moment I'd just lived—Duke's body being taken from my arms, the last kiss pressed against white fabric, the choice that had felt like death even though death had already happened hours before.

Emotions are a luxury I can't afford.

The thought arrived with harsh clarity, a survival instinct finally asserting itself over the chaos of grief.

In Clivilius, they're a vulnerability. They'll get me killed. They'll get Joel killed.

I forced everything down—the grief, the guilt, the terror, the rage that still burned cold beneath it all. Shoved it into some internal compartment and slammed the door. I would deal with it later, if there was a later.

For now, I needed to be functional. Capable. A person who could track a Portal pirate across hostile terrain and bring my son home alive.