Mila felt it before she saw it, as the offshoot she was chopping at started to peel away. There was a tiny lurch in the branch she was standing on, a fraction of a second where her footing was jumping upward, and was glad she had her tail wrapped around the branch firmly. It kept her anchored as wood, weakened by the damage done to its base but still alive, began to twist and splinter.
Mila pulled away from her work, machete blade held low and away from her, and held her breath as the offshoot slowly, surely pulled itself away from the branch, each gravity-pulled turn loudly crunching. It separated with one final pop and fell away, while Mila’s own branch shot up, only to jarringly halt and drop as the rope she had tied to the now-severed piece of wood caught it and swung it away and down.
It still set her footing to wobbling up and down, and Mila just stayed as stock still as she could, not willing to risk anything lurching as she tried to move. Instead, she just listened and focused, trying to judge if the entire big branch was about to come off the tree. It did not feel like it, and as the rough movements settled, Mila was happy to find that judgement correct.
“First free, two more to go!” She called out before sidling across her branch and bracing in place, lining up her machete, tail snug against bark. No warning call came and Mila nodded to herself before continuing her work.
She did not consider herself a woodswoman at all, finding too much comfort in the trappings of the city. Mila did have to admit to herself, though, that there was something fun and unique to being out here and putting herself to a specific task. Her steel biting through bark and wood, angling to widen the chop, and then freeing her knife to begin again, was meditative as a process, it gave her little to worry about.
Well, it would if those three things were all that was at play. Her heart skipped a beat as her perch jumped again, but she was attached firmly, and even if it did fall, she had her own tether. She would be fine.
That did not mean she liked having to lean out and down, though, when the second offshoot did not splinter away from the main branch cleanly. Instead, she had to give three more tentative strikes before it dropped away, which left her leaning above the abyss as the main branch snapped up and then dropped again as the offshoot caught on its line.
This time, she did windmill a bit, still secure but trying to haul her center of gravity back while keeping the edge of her blade as far away from her choppable bits as she could. It did not help her position, but it made her feel better as she rolled herself upright, finding her blade held low and out once more.
“Two down, one to go!”
The third and final offshoot, the one closest to the trunk, was not immediately jumped upon yet. She still had rope work to do, scurrying up and fishing the tail of the rope from where she had left it at the final offshoot. There was a good bit of rope left, enough for her to tie to the line traversing between dying tree and mountain of the dead, and that was exactly what she had to do. Thankfully it was less difficult than tying off the line to the trunk of the tree, but it had her checking all her knots and lashings so far, both the sturdy sliding loop that she tied around the traversal line, and the traversal line’s lashing around the trunk.
It all seemed secure, and the ropes themselves were new, strong stuff. For all that, though, Mila was still hellishly nervous about whether or not this was going to work. She mumbled to herself as she worked out the worst case scenario, eyeing the offshoot that valiantly held up two of its siblings, the branch she stood on, and her traversal line that would be coming under a lot of weight soon, and suddenly.
It still had to happen, though. “Everyone clear of the line? Line secure?”
There was a bit less than a minute of quiet, although with the wind blowing through the canopy, it was not exactly *silent* for Mila - there was a reason she was shouting her notifications to the others. Had to make sure the words got through the foliage, and greenery, even sickly and dying, had a habit of eating up meaning.
“Line secure, all clear!” Was Aluca’s response, which would have to be good enough. Mila crept down the branch for what was hopefully the last time and began to hack away at the third branch, each blow cranking up her worries that the ropes would not hold or that the entire branch she stood on would give way or something.
The offshoot’s would gave up before anything else, at least, but this time Mila’s perch went wobbling up and down without a quick stop, instead drowning any thought out with the crash of foliage meeting tree trunk and causing the entire deciduous behemoth to shudder. It was only during the clatter that it occurred to Mila that, were the ropes to snap, the traversal line might go ricocheting out horizontally. A jumbled, half-remembered combination of Final Destination, Ghost Ship, and internet gore video crossed her mind for a split second, maybe all false memory, but it was enough to chill Mila’s blood.
Quick, about as quick as the thought that had instigated it, Mila dropped to her stomach, clinging to the branch with her tail and quickly finding purchase with boots and her free hand as the wobbling continued. There was no person-severing pop of the under-tension line flying free as the branch’s undulations slowed, thankfully, but Mila still felt cold in her bones that she had not considered that before, that it maybe could have happened.
Not an issue here, but next time. Next time she would not fuck that up.
For the time being, it was yet another item to try not to dwell upon.
Mila moved herself back to the trunk, scooped up the other coil of rope that she had deposited there earlier, and took a moment to think. One end would have to tie to her oversized garland, and she would have to carry the other end back to the bridge. The issue was the carrying bit, which she got to thinking on as she tied the working end of the rope to the rope with the removed branches. Tying or wrapping this new rope to herself was moronic, in case any of the other ropes failed. She did not want the weight of her quarry pulling her in half, but she needed her hands free and the rope to not get caught on anything. After a minute of thinking, she was coming empty on the latter, so with a shrug, she decided to just go with what she had, tying her harness to the traversal line and taking her lead to the prize in her mouth.
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Another limber up and she was on her way, hanging down and hustling her way back to the bridge, hand over hand and foot over foot. About halfway there, it felt, the lead she held in her jaws did get a bit caught on one of the branches she had liberated, but after a few firm tugs to free the line, she was able to continue without any more snags.
This time, Rora was the one to meet her on the bridge, deftly rotating Mila back to her feet and giving a tight hug. Once Rora broke the hug, her golden eyes peered into Mila’s a little too deeply, and the pink kobold broke the gaze with an awkward shift, taking the lead from her mouth and offering it up sheepishly.
“Are you alright?” Rora asked after a beat, slowly taking the offered rope but not paying it much mind.
Which was… a big old question. Clearly she did not look all one hundred percent, if Rora was asking. But how would she crack that can of worms, even if she wanted to?
Everything started to creep back in, started to ooze through the cracks and bring the dread with its presence, but Mila shored herself up with a big inhale, letting it escape back out slowly.
“Yeah, I am, I think. Just had a bit of a whole… personal crisis over there? Rattled me. But I’m good now!” Mila gave a thumbs up to go with the proclamation, since anyone giving a thumbs up when asked about their mental state was only doing the best.
Her other hand fiddled with the harness’s connection to the traversal line but managed to undo it blindly. And as she managed that, Rora gave her another deep look. She did not press the issue though, and Mila knew that she never would. Rora would wait for Mila to come to her, if she needed to, and Mila appreciated that.
She appreciated the follow-up hug a lot too. She could not weigh one against the other but, had she been asked in the moment, the hug was front and center, not hindered at all by the plates of metal and moonlight that wrapped Rora.
Mila slipped out and away, eventually, even if she could have stayed there forever. “Got you plenty of salad fixin’s, thataway,” she gave, gesturing across the way, where she was pretty sure she could see some of the foliage she had amputated. “And I’ll get out of your hair, so y’all can bring it in?”
The question, all rhetorical, set Rora to giggling and gently shaking her head, lack of hair on display. Hughestace looked less amused, but that might also be because Aluca and Naw-Naw had already retreated during the second hug, Mila soon joining them, and he knew that he was one of the two that would be doing the ‘real work’ for now.
Mila did not pay Hughestace much attention as she took a seat right at the ant-corpse side of the bridge, a glance showing a relatively fresh body barely hanging onto the mountain a number of feet below the bridge’s base. So they’d be needing to keep a guard on watch tonight anyway.
No, Mila was much more interested in watching Rora work as the two braced themselves and began pulling the branches over, one tug at a time. There was a focus on Rora’s face that spoke of the same kind of trance that Mila had been put into when chopping the branches, and Mila liked to see it.
The singular attention across her eyes was intense in a way that sent not-unpleasant tingles through Mila, and each full-body pull on the rope had Rora scrunching her brow and nose in a way that was downright adorable. And the way the light caught her crown of horns….
Mila did not even question the waterskin that was pressed into her hands, instead tipping it back and drinking deeply while trying to not disrupt her view. Four large gulps were enough, for now, and she lowered it and passed it back with a grunt of appreciation.
“Seemed thirsty,” was Aluca’s comment before he downed the rest of the water, smacking his lips as he wrung the last of its contents out. “Still do, admittedly. The drooling doesn’t help.”
Mila’s head snapped around, brows high as her mind scrabbled for a jab in response and definitely no part of her did a small check to verify that she was not, in fact, drooling. Unfortunately, any attempt to reclaim dignity was undercut as Naw-Naw’s laughter burst over whatever Mila was going to say.
“‘At’s ‘ardly her fault! Can’ help salivatin’ when a good meal is ‘efore you, eh?” Was followed by the gnoll jostling the pink kobold with an elbow, and Mila fell into her own, much quieter, laugh, a little abashed.
“Give me a break! Some of us have been working hard. Y’all got your stuff coming up, too.”
“Yeah, but now I’m worried you’ll be ogling me as I work.”
“Ha! Doubtful, and in your dreams. You don’t quite have the wiles I look for, I’m afraid.”
“Mmm. Rora ‘as many wiles. Powerful wiles. Fierce wiles,” Naw-Naw confirmed, although they were busy looking at Mila when they said it, drinking up the light blush that crossed her face as she nodded her agreement.
Wiles aplenty, and so much more. Mila turned back to watch her, drinking in some more of the sight. “She helped me pick out some fancy clothes, ya know? I want to go on a date with her, and one of those outfits, when we get back. A fancy date.”
The other two gave a soft chorus of “Oooh, a fancy date!” They fell into schoolyard giggles and Mila joined them, fully aware of how cheesy that was, but by the gods and goddesses above, she was looking forward to it. Fancy places and fancy people and fancy events had this nebulous insufferability to them in her mind, but that was all washed away when she thought about to going to something fancy with Rora. Being fancy with Rora. Because that seemed fun as hell.
Mila reigned her giggle fit in, after a time. “That means I need y’all to hurry up, once they get those leaves up here! Sooner we finish, sooner we go home, and all that.”
There were a pair of non-word agreements buried in the continued giggles, and all Mila could do was smile. Getting the hanging branches to the bridge was one thing, but pulling them up to the bridge was another, it turned out, and that set Mila’s smile to be a bit more brittle as Rora and Hughestace painstakingly worked there at the lip of the bridge to haul the leafs up.
Naw-Naw could tell, probably, and spoke, maybe trying to distract Mila from fixating on how Rora felt too close to the edge. “Just got t’ poison an ant queen, yeah? Nothin’ too hard. Slippin’ it past the ant taste tester’s the hardest part, I reckon.”
“Ha! Easy to do, I imagine. Not the most discerning palette, ants.” Mila turned to look over at Aluca, who himself seemed a bit ill-at-ease watching the two muscly team members work, and then Naw-Naw, who exuded quiet confidence, in everyone present.
They cared, and they were all gonna do their best. They had this handled, Mila knew. Yeah, she did not need to fret. Instead, she leaned back a little bit, propping herself up on her hands behind her.
“Yeah. And you know? I’ve always wanted to do a regicide. This is just a bucket list item for me!” Mila Vita, Queenkiller. Sounded pretty badass, if she said so herself.