He had intended to sweep into Whitewall like a revelation; step out of the carriage stride before it for a mile to the gates and announce his intentions. But the long day of sitting up in a rocking carriage had taken a surprising amount out of him, and the carriage bunk, full of warm furs and the warmer smell of cedar pulled Iron Milosz into a doze.

Outside, voices. The carriage halted, and sharp, urgent words—four at least and one high and panicked, not just the bass-voiced reinsman and conductor who’d spent the journey (presumably) perched atop the carriage managing the horses. Milosz dragged his consciousness, leaden, back into his body, rolled back his shoulders, and reinvested his energy into keeping his feet planted in a fight. He could even walk on ceilings if he had to. The cost of Exaltation had been too dear — to wake up in a world where nothing he’d done mattered — but it did have perks.

He glanced at his companions to look for signs they knew what was going on. Taunts-The-Darkness was as relaxed as ever. His chin rested on his fist as he leaned against the carriage wall, and he gave Milosz an enigmatic smile. The Chronicler looked roped into a chaos he’d rather not have signed up for, but he placed his corpsey hand on the carriage door to throw it open and peer out.

The cobbles of the trade road radiated silver glow through the mud and horse shit that smeared the surface. The road was blocked; another carriage was across its length, and the horses were anxiously shifting. The reinsman and conductor from that one was holding a woman back from running off the road. She was in plain clothes—not destitute, but not much better—late middle-aged, crying and begging to be let go. Despite her small stature, she gave her captors a hard time, twisting in their grasp, pitting her strength against theirs. 

The reinsman, in particular, was irritated. “If you don’t stop, I might let you go.”

“Please! Please.” She looked so small. An ordinary woman like that would have neither coin nor influence that could move the conductor to change his mind or help her.

Milosz’s objections to holding her back caught in his throat as he remembered that stepping off the road would be almost certain death.  Milosz leaned out of the carriage to orient himself.

They were so close. Whitewall’s silvery light shone on the horizon. On either side of the road, the marsh and the dark that cloaked it felt like it was closing in.

“The bordermarch moved,” observed Taunts-the-Darkness. Milosz scowled, but Taunts-the-Darkness continued. “That woman’s son needed to relieve himself. Guess he was too shy to shit on the road.”

The Chronicler piped up. “‘Was?’”

Milosz took Taunts-The-Darkness’s meaning immediately, however. He explained, “The only thing keeping the hungry dead and the bordermarches off this road is the enchantment. If he stepped off, he’s gone.”

“Already?”

Taunts-the-Darkness nodded. “It only swallowed him a few minutes ago, but as good as. Unless.”

Milosz waited for Taunts-The-Darkness to finish, but instead, the Chronicler spoke up. “There’s no time for this. We have business in Whitewall.”

“Of course, my Abyssal friend. And you, as well, Iron. And me. I’m important, you’re important, she’s important,” he waved lazily at the woman. While they’d been speaking, she’d crumpled into a weeping heap. One of the men still had her by the arm in case she bolted, and the conductor was sitting on her heels and trying awkwardly to comfort a stranger as best she could. Milosz heard muttered words like, “nothing we can do.”

Taunts-the-Darkness, said, “It’s terribly unfair, but is that our problem? A life snuffed out — just like that. All the possibilities. Who would he have been, do you think? And all because of the fae, and—well, I would say their tyrannical—”

“Shut it,” the Abyssal said. “I’m thinking.”

The Lunar hooked a finger over his own mouth to quiet it.

Milotz also thought. The Lunar was a fool, but he wasn’t wrong. The boy probably wouldn’t live long — but he might still be alive.

Milosz felt, suddenly, ashamed. He’d imagined himself swanning into Whitewall and exerting the power of his Exaltation to secure himself a hero’s welcome, and then to look for trouble. In short, Whitewall was dangerous, and he was bored. No, worse than bored — numb. Once, he’d led rebellions, freed the oppressed. What he did mattered. Here, nothing he’d ever done truly existed. All the tricks he’d gained from being Exalted either made things too easy, or only convinced others he deserved things he hadn’t earned. The only thing that seemed to get attributed to him was trouble, so he made trouble.

Did he need to go all the way to Whitewall? Trouble was here.

Milosz stepped out and cautiously approached the edge of the road, and the Lunar followed. The glow of the road only touched a few feet of the marsh grass, whose feathery tops waved in the wind. And somewhere deep within, the grass parted just so, and half a dozen white slits grouped in a tight circle—Eyes? Teeth?—flashed, and he took a quick step back. As he did,  Taunts-the-Darkness took a sudden, exaggerated step off the road, and the combination of the two made the onlookers gasp. The reinsman gripped the woman tighter, and the Chronicler, who’d hung behind in the carriage, stepped out. He cracked his knuckles and firmed up his chin like a fighter preparing for a brawl. Milosz’s companions were a Lunar and an Abyssal — they had ways of handling the Wyld. Milosz desperately thought of every trick he knew. He flexed his fingers to work the drained blood back into them.

Milosz didn’t have a damn thing that could protect him from the Wyld.

“Stop playing,” the Chronicler rasped at Taunts-the-Darkness.

“Exciting, isn’t it? I’ve never been to the Wyld. Have you?”

The Abyssal blinked, and a strange look came across his face, like longing. Taunts-the-Darkness addressed Milosz. “My business in Whitewall will wait, but the kid can’t. And if it doesn’t — well, a boy got snatched because he needed to take a leak. Doesn’t seem fair, does it?”

With that, he stepped further into the darkness. Milosz turned to the Abyssal, who, to his surprise, was striding to the edge of the road. The coach’s conductor let go of the woman (who was watching, too stunned to continue her struggle) and sprinted after him to catch his arm. The Abyssal gently pushed her away like she was nothing and stepped into the bordermarch. He called over his shoulder to Milosz. “Are you coming?”

It would be extraordinarily dangerous — perhaps the most dangerous thing he’d ever do. His magic would only get him so far here. It wouldn’t be a victory parade. Just a dangerous search, in the dark, for a boy’s body to return to his mother. A small, real, act of hard-won heroism that would only matter to one person. He’d already gone through a fate worse than death—forgotten by everyone he ever loved. He was a shard in reality’s skin, a foreign object pushed ever outward. The bordermarch would be worse yet. His flesh could be braided like hair. His mind could be sucked from his body, and he left in the waving grass, an empty shell doomed to starve to death mere feet from where the carriages rattled onward to Whitewall.

Milosz broke out into a smile.

On Thursday, Onyx Path will be running a Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) over on  https://www.reddit.com/r/WhiteWolfRPG/ at 12 noon Eastern time! They’ll be answering questions about Essence and the Essence PG for sure, and also questions about anything else folks want to throw their way!