“Why won’t you let him know you’re here? You know he’d come to see you. He’s supposed to be in New York City again soon.” Red set her hands on her hips. The fact that she had to keep covering for her cousin was wearing her down; Phoebe’s husband and daughter hadn’t even done anything wrong. Phoebe just didn’t want to talk to them. At first it seemed reasonable but this was far past reasonable.
“That’s why.” Phoebe didn’t look up from the device she was using to generate more low-Tier Unbound Fate Essence Seeds. “I’m not going to see him until everyone’s free of the curse. We’ll head to a hotel again when he gets to the city.”
“That’s never going to happen,” Red argued, meaning freeing everyone rather than the hotel. This wasn’t the first time they’d had this discussion; it was well past the twenty-first. They knew each other’s arguments by now, but it didn’t stop them. “Those help but they aren’t a complete fix, and even if they were you’d never reach everyone.”
Normally, Phoebe got mad and yelled at Red after she made that point. This time, she drew in the usual deep breath then seemed to think better of it and let it back out. “I know, but … it helps. It really does. You don’t - you weren’t as affected as I was. It didn’t make you cripple your son and nearly kill your daughter.”
“I don’t have children,” Red retorted. It was a weak answer, but it was the truth.
“And I shouldn’t have. But I did, so here we are.” Phoebe sighed heavily. “It’s literally my job to know these things and I didn’t. I didn’t have a way to know, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less. Phoebe stopped pushing mana into the device and leaned back in her chair. “I hate this. Not doing it, just how long it takes. It’s necessary but I still hate it.”
“You know he’s hurting,” Red tried. She was the one who had to talk to Russ whenever he called, the one who had to listen to his hope turn to ashes each time.
Phoebe looked down. “Yeah. But if I go to him now … I’m still cursed, Red. And the person who cursed me is still out there somewhere. I’d rather he’s hurt than dead, and he’s chasing the person who made that curse. He’s closer than he thinks he is but still so far … and if I tell him anything, it won’t be just him that I tell. That’s the problem with the curse. I can see it, Red.”
Red collapsed onto the couch next to the table. “Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
Phoebe turned to look at the incomplete Unbound Fate Essence Seed. “Choices. I can see so many different ways that we lose. So many ways for Russ to die. Some of them, maybe most of them, I can’t do anything about. I don’t even know what they are. The ones I can see, though? If Russ or Rissa or Serenity knows what I know, everything goes to hell. All too literally. If I tell them, they’re countered. Serenity … Serenity always survives, I always see him later. Rissa usually makes it, as well. Russ? He doesn’t. I haven’t yet seen a future where I tell him anything that he survives. So don’t you go telling him even this much!”
By the end of her rant, Phoebe was yelling.
Red glanced around the room. The room in Aki’s dungeon that she’d set aside for Phoebe to use when she visited. The room where Aki could see and hear everything that happened. “Is that because he knows it or because you told him?”
Phoebe gave Red an odd look. She must not have realized why Red asked the question, even though she’d spoken to Aki in this room more than once. “He can find out on his own. I can’t tell him and neither can anyone who is cursed; that would draw his enemy’s attention. He knows he’s hunted, but right now it’s a game. It needs to stay that way.”
That meant Red couldn’t even hint about what she was thinking to Phoebe; after all, she didn’t want Phoebe telling Aki. That might be fine but it might also cause the problem Phoebe was worried about. On the other hand, if Aki happened to overhear, that should be fine, shouldn’t it? “Can you tell me?”
Phoebe took a breath, started to say something, then stopped with her mouth open and seemed to think for a moment before continuing. A series of emotions flitted across her face as she thought; worry seemed to be the dominant one. “I’m not sure. I will have to look. If I can, though, you can’t tell him. Or anyone.”
Red nodded. “I won’t. Why don’t you go take a rest now? I know you’re always tired after working on the curse counteragents.”
Red would go do what she normally did, head to Aki’s crafting area and into her workroom. This time she’d gotten her hands on a bracelet from the Tutorial, someone’s dungeon reward, and was trying to reverse engineer exactly how it managed to let the wearer walk on water temporarily. She was pretty sure it wasn’t weight reduction, it didn’t act like that, but she wasn’t sure what it was - especially since it only worked on water. Ocean water was fine, but the moment she thought of it as wet salt instead of salt water, she was dunked.
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“I’ll do that,” Phoebe answered, “but you’re going to have to tell me exactly what you’re working on when I get up!”
Phoebe knew her so well.
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The encampment wasn’t nearly as successful at hurting people as the tree trap, but it was far better at getting them to pay attention to it. Even two days after it was found, the Imperials still had guards on the fake camp. They probably assumed that the abandoned tent and camping gear meant that “Amily” was missing things she needed, things she’d come back for. That was what they were meant to think, after all.
It wasn’t enough to draw the Viper out, but it was enough to push him into changing the guard setup inside the base again. He’d reduced it significantly; unfortunately, he hadn’t changed the thing Serenity thought was the most important. The lights in the corridors were still on all night. Serenity had needed to alter the ritual to track light levels, but now that he’d seen how much of a difference they made inside the base it was worth it.
He couldn’t get inside to disrupt the ritual room, at least not safely. That meant they were still on the plan to draw out the Viper; they just had to make sure he didn’t run away first. It was enough to make Serenity wish he’d headed to the smaller room, the one with the escape ritual, and damaged it. He knew he’d made the best decision he could at the time, avoiding fighting someone at a higher Tier who was prepared, but that didn’t mean he didn’t regret the lost opportunity.
They were in a battle of attrition, where the goal wasn’t to kill soldiers but to draw the dismissive ire of the Viper. They needed to keep picking at his confidence in his soldiers without ever making it look like he wasn’t more than good enough.
Traps were good, but they were expecting traps now; they’d slowed down their exploration but were still looking. They still had the Viper’s interest, but he’d never come to the surface and that just wasn’t what they needed. After a lot of discussion, they decided that the next pinprick should be something a bit more direct, something that demonstrated that the soldiers, even in groups, weren’t enough.
A direct attack on a squad would be perfect, but they still needed to disguise their numbers. It had to be a clear win but not an overpowering win; if they could make it look like they had to set up favorable circumstances to make it work, that would be best. It wasn’t an easy balance to strike.
Serenity put himself out of the running immediately. He didn’t think he could make his attacks look weak enough; while he could kill them either at short range or long range, a spellcaster willing to kill a group using area spells while they were alone was either crazy or so powerful he didn’t have to worry about it, which meant he’d have to attack in melee. At the same time, he wasn’t confident he could pull his attacks enough to make it look like they were done by a single Tier Five or Six; even pulling his blows, Serenity was afraid he’d end up making it look like a Tier Eight. He was stronger than Daryl, after all, and Daryl was higher Tier than Serenity.
Similar considerations applied to most of the others. In the end, it really came down to Gabriel or Daryl. Daryl was an archer, perfectly suited to attacking with a single killing blow then retreating to repeat it a little while later. It rarely worked out that well in reality, but an archer taking out a group of people two or three Tiers below him was completely believable.
Similarly, while Gabriel was primarily a healer, he had a number of battlefield control wands; his Ice Walls were his bread and butter in a dungeon. They could be just as good against a group of soldiers, especially in a forest. He’d have to pick away at them slowly with Firebolt, but it would work.Or perhaps not all that slowly; Gabriel’s Firebolt wasn’t at Tier Nine, but it was still higher Tier than the soldiers. It might well be faster than Serenity thought.
In the end, the decision was easy; Gabriel didn’t want the fight and Daryl did. Serenity was getting the impression that Gabriel fought because he felt he had to, while Daryl fought because he loved it. There was nothing wrong with either preference as far as Serenity was concerned. He wasn’t close enough to ask why Gabriel felt that way, so he left the matter alone.
They had a wonderful selection of locations they could use for the fight and still be able to watch it from Serenity’s tent. By now, Ita’s tokens were scattered over a good portion of the forest; she’d shifted from her usual clay discs to twigs gathered from the forest. It made them far harder for enemies to find, but that wasn’t the important thing; the important thing was that she only had so many clay discs. There were far more twigs in the forest.
Daryl turned out to be able to walk from tree to tree, through the branches, without disturbing anything. He could even move from branch to branch on a tree without climbing between them and from tree to tree, even when there was no branch that would support his weight connecting them. They just had to be close enough, which they were in the forest. It was an impressive Skill, but one Serenity didn’t expect to ever get; it was highly specialized and Serenity simply didn’t spend that much time in trees.
Daryl watched the soldiers move around the forest for a while before he chose his target: a squad that had managed to become strung out in the forest rather than staying together. They were more or less in the area between the clearing and the fake campsite, which made it even better.
Daryl made sure to take the squad’s leader out first.
It was a short fight; even after the leader died, most of the squad never saw where the arrows came from. The three who did were taken out before they could reach the tree Daryl stood in; he didn’t even have to change positions.
Two soldiers escaped. Serenity watched Daryl decide to let them run; he had a clear shot and simply didn’t take it.
By the time reinforcements poured into the woods, Daryl was long gone. Even better, he hadn’t left a useful trail; his Skill meant that he skipped over space for limited distances. If anyone wanted to follow him, they’d have to either have a similar trail or climb each tree to check for possible traces. It was possible and a tracking Skill would make it far easier, but the soldiers didn’t have such a thing.