Page 107 of Brandt's Rule
“Oh! Now you’re warmer!”
Brandt skirted the muck he’d just climbed out of and entered the woods.
“You’re burning up!” Destroy called out happily, following Brandt.
“I thought I just came from this direction,” Brandt said.
“It’s the glamour. It’s meant to make you think you’re going back the way you came, when really you’re not.”
“So I’m going the right way now?” Brandt asked.
“Did I not say ‘burning up’?”
“You did.”
“Then you’re going the right way.”
“Good. She did mention you, in all honesty,” Brandt said.
“Really? She said I’m fantastic, didn’t she?”
“She mentioned she was very fond of you.”
“I knew it,” Destroy said. “Oh, wait, you’re getting cold again.”
“How? I didn’t change direction!”
“Glamour. Let’s go this way,” Destroy said, taking Brandt by the shoulders and turning him slightly. “Walk that way.”
Brandt did as he was told, and Destroy followed calling out warmer, or colder, for the better part of another hour.
Eventually they moved beyond the glamour at the borders of Whispers and Brandt was suddenly more sure of the path he was on. “You can find your way now,” Destroy announced.
“Which way is her home?”
“Southeast.”
“Thank you,” Brandt said, and started walking.
Destroy fell into step with him.
“You’re coming along?”
“Yes. I feel I’d miss something if I went home now.”
“Like what?”
“Like Tempest blasting you either figuratively or literally. Like her father burning you to ash where you stand. Like Carnage skinning you alive.”
“I’ve heard that’s his thing.”
“Carnage? He’s rather proficient at it. Or he was, he hasn’t done it in many, many centuries.”
“Wonderful,” Brandt said.
“So, tell me of you. Of your people, your world.”
So Brandt told him about all of his family, all of his friends. The things they liked to do, the things they had to guard against. The ways in which they kept themselves hidden from most humans and answered all of Destroy’s questions the best he could. And by the time they arrived at Tempest’s parents’ home, they’d become friends.