Epilogue 3

Gerard, Zook, Wellby and Milo stood ready, just behind the large forbidding set of double-doors.

Milo always expected doors like that to be trapped.

So did Wellby, and so the Rogue had reflexively checked for that.

Gerard shrugged to settle his ornate armor better on his shoulders, then said,

"OK, Milo, let's go."

"uh..." Milo hesitated.

"Come on already, no dawdling. This is best faced by charging right in." Gerard said.

"But..."

"Seriously?. We've faced demons, dragons and countless lesser threats. You can face this."

Gerard was inclined to give Milo a helpful shove, but he knew better - some spell triggers didn't make very fine distinctions, and couldn't tell between a friendly shove and a hostile claw attack.

"Those were dangerous and difficult. But this is downright *scary*" Milo admitted.

"Oh please. Come on man. Many have faced this before and succeded, with less resources than you have. If they could do it, so can you. You're an epic level adventurer after all."

"But think of all the things that could go wrong..."

"Yes," Gerard interrupted, "Bad things can happen. But that doesn't mean they *will* happen. Risk can never be entirely eliminated. And if you never take risks, you can never succeed - like that sports guy said 'you miss 100% of the shots you do not take'. You've taken risks before, when potential benefit justified it. The benefits here are very much worth the risks."

Milo sighed. "OK. That hit the mark. The benefits *are* worth the risks. Lets go."

"Whew," Zook said, "for a minute there I thought we were going to have to go with Plan B and cast Calm Emotions on you."

Milo took a deep breath, opened the door and started down the aisle.

A ragged cheer went up from the groom's side of the cathedral, where sat a motley bunch of friends from many races including elves, gnomes, halflings and humans, plus unicorns, sphinxes, coatls, two angels - chatting intently with the angel club - djinn, mephits, dragons, a manticore, one very antique set of dresser drawers that was animated and had an interesting story behind them, and a bewildering variety of other creatures, many of which weren't very familiar with human norms of decorum at weddings.

Milo smiled and nodded to them, then looked to the front.

Hannah was standing by the altar, wearing an ornate white dress, with Relkin at her side in a purple bridesmaid's dress.

Hanna smiled at Milo and his fears fled.

She was his best friend.

They could make this work, notwithstanding the scary anecdotes folks liked to tell.