Chapter Sixteen: Moonlight
The afternoon sun hung in the sky like the angry eye of Goddess. It was hot, just shy of stifling. The wind had for once relinquished its ubiquitous hold on the Grounds. An intermittent, light breeze stirred around them. Crickets sang a chorus from the roadside. Smoke drifted low across the ground.
In the Deep, after such a large and noisy fight, you could always hear distant screeches and howls, barks and shrieks. Other predators were inevitably drawn to the sound of conflict, hoping to take advantage.
The only noise now was the song of the thousands of insects who made the Proving Grounds their home.Their incessant, monotone chirping was grating.
But that was not to say that other predators had not taken note of their fights. Three, back to back, against the wind sprites, then the sharks, and finally the orcs, had surely caused enough of a commotion that others had noticed. And noticed, they had.
Tom, Rosa, Darius, Markus, and Tanya stood together. Huddled on their lonely stretch of the trade road, a thin band of dirt splitting an otherwise perfect quilt of green. Through Sus and Sol, Tom could make out hints in their surroundings of the approach of more beasts, drawn to them like flies to honey.
Here, a flash of chitin as the wind pulled the grass aside. There, the grass pushed unnaturally against the wind’s grasp. All around them, converging.
They were all at a loss. The deaths of Eli and Meri had hit them hard. This was life in The World, a world where stepping outside the safety of walled fortress-cities was always flirting with death. Eli and Meri had known the costs. It made the loss only marginally easier to bear.
Eli had been stoic, but good natured. Thirty years as a Guard had left him rough around the edges, but he had a good heart. Meri was shifty, always seeming just a little sly and evasive, but she was incredibly loyal to those who had proved themselves to her, and Tom had never met a better scout.
Their loss had created a kind of inertia that was difficult to overcome, at least with any speed. They moved with lethargy, aware that they needed to get moving, but unable to muster the energy for it just yet.
There were some few silver linings. Markus was alive, and his lion, Coro, had even miraculously survived. He had subbed it so that it could recover. It meant he had no familiar to ride, and would have to double up with Rosa or Darius. But it would slow them, and they needed to be fast.
As far as Tom could see, there were no more orcs in the area, even if there were plenty of other creatures.
After a few minutes of aimless idling, Rosa summoned Coal. With a monumental effort, she mounted up. Sesame, who was still sore, but uninjured after Darius’ ministrations, allowed Tom to do the same. Darius hopped upon Granny, and Markus wedged his feet into a small cleft on the back of her shell and held onto the peak of it.
Tanya summoned Dusty, her mule, and mounted up too. After she was settled in her saddle, she accessed the spatial storage tied to the familiar and passed around bottles filled with vibrant green liquid to each of them.
As he tipped the potion down his throat, energy poured through him, warming his muscles, loosening them, clearing his thoughts. It tasted like bottled springtime, and felt like it too. Feeling much more refreshed, though not totally recovered, they began to ride off slowly down the trade road.
Within minutes, they were under attack.
The familiars had barely gotten up to travelling speed when Darius gave a wordless cry. Some kind of small, tan wolf launched itself from the grass, skidding onto the road in front of them. It snarled and snapped, feinting at them, leaping right up to the familiars before skittering away again, just out of reach.
“Watch the mounts! Watch behind!” Darius called. “They have poison!”
As if he had summoned, more of the small wolves poured from the grass. They circled them, yipping and whining, making an awful din. As one menaced the party, gaining their attention, others snuck in from behind, trying to get close enough to bite.
Granny hampered their efforts, stalling them with earthen snares until Rosa doused one of them in fire. The creature squealed as it burned, driving its fellows into a frenzy. It took another burned, and two more skewered by arrows, before the pack retreated, slinking off into the tall grass.
Darius sighed, scrubbing his face. “We must be careful. The winewolves are small, but they are persistent. They will be back.”
The others were too tired to comment. Tom found himself asking the obvious question: “Why do they call them winewolves?”
“Because, when they bite, you stumble around like after a night at the tavern, and then your skin is turning red like good wine. It can be taking a day for you to die. I hear it is painful.”
Tom gulped, nodding. Even if the venom didn’t affect him, he would not want Sesame, or anyone else to be subject to it.
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He returned his attention to the roadside, and his owls. He had subbed most of Sere’s bodies again, now that they were on the move. The extra speed and reflexes from her sub bonuses would be more useful than the extra eyes in the sky.
Five minutes later they were ambushed once more, this time by a trio of soil sprites. The creatures took on the appearance of small hillocks. They surfed about, feeding by trapping their prey and dragging it under the earth before crushing it.
They were, however, extremely slow. To be sure, Darius had Granny pushed back on them as they trailed hopefully after the group, but even without the help they would never have been fast enough to catch them. Darius explained that they usually snuck up on sleeping prey.
They kept riding until nightfall, and were ambushed another dozen times. Another scorpion attacked them, and then the winewolves tried to take advantage of the delay. Rosa finally put the issue to rest by inundating them with flames as soon as they appeared. They left a half dozen smoking corpses behind them on the road.
An absolutely enormous snake happened to be taking advantage of the last of the sun, sunbathing with its enormous body, thick around as a tree, blocking the road.
They dithered for a few minutes, and eventually settled on unloading all their ranged skills and attacks at once into the same section of the snake. They picked out a pattern on part of its scales, and loosed on a count of three.
Fire raged. Arrows flew. Pink lightning hissed. An odd ball of light manifested in the air, and fired a white ray, too. Tom frowned, but everyone was concentrating. Someone had manifested a new skill.
The snake was cleanly bisected. Each half thrashed about for some thirty seconds or so before it finally fell still. From the air, he had seen at least several hundred feet of grass wiggling back and forth with the snake’s death throes. He was doubly glad, then, that they had stumbled across it while it was napping, and had not tried to engage it conventionally.
Most of the ambushes occurred closer to the early afternoon, and began to tail off the more distance they put under their feet. Indeed, as they rode, they slowly began to recover and pick up speed, too. They didn’t stop until hours after nightfall, when the grass became silvery under the moonlight. Then they finally ground to halt, too exhausted to go further.
They set up their wardpoles in silence. Loose thoughts bounced around in Tom’s head like rocks trickling down a slope. They had come so far, now only a handful of days away from Horizon, and had lost two party members so close to their goal. It was a sobering reminder that Idealists were not invincible. Not those with thirty years of experience fighting, not those with senses honed to points.
Pure luck had been the ultimate decider as to who lived and who died. If Tom had not had Sweet Suffering, or if it had not activated, he would be dead. If he had never manifested Sesame, Rosa would be dead. If they had not stumbled across Darius in the Deep, and convinced him to return with them, Markus would be dead.
Only the finest of margins separated them from the grave at any given time. Tom had found it a heavy enough burden to bear when he was first exiled, but he had grown into it, gotten comfortable with shouldering it. Death no longer overly scared him. It was a matter of exposure. That, and the simple fact that seizing in fear at the wrong moment, letting it dictate your actions when it shouldn’t, would get you killed just as surely as bad luck.
But now that Hunters were respected? Not that he had true freedom to enjoy? Now that he had friends, a partner, who he loved, who relied on him, and who he relied on in turn? His own death had taken on a different meaning, just as his life had. The same was true for his companions, but especially Rosa.
Without the fiery woman by his side, pushing him, expecting him to do better, to be better, challenging him, and expecting him to challenge himself, he would be lost.
He had grown fond of Markus and Tanya. He had even grown fond of Darius. Even though the man was oblivious and arrogant and a little selfish, he was also kind and loyal and fearless.
Tom sighed, placing the last wardpole just so. He checked and double checked their positioning, ensuring they were all placed correctly. He forcibly settled his thoughts. There was no use in worrying. What would be would be. He would do his best to enjoy his time, and the company he kept, while he had it. Anything more was in Goddess’ hands.
The five of them settled down to eat, saying a few words here and there. They were mostly silent, and quiet when they were not. They ate their dinner, a meal of cold, preserved meats, thick, crumbly cheese, fruit and vegetable preserves, and crusty bread, at a languid pace.
No food had ever tasted so good in Tom’s life. He didn’t think he had exerted himself so much since the siege, and his fight with the Smith, and before that, his drake hunt. He relished every bite.
When they were done, and cutlery and crockery were stowed, Tanya brought out five tall, thin glasses from a spatial ring. Tom spent a moment admiring it in the moonlight. He had never seen such delicate work.
Tanya cocked her head, and Dusty paused his meal of hay with a disgruntled snort and ambled over. Tanya retrieved a small cask from his spatial storage. She turned it about in her hands, reading something on the side of it in the moonlight.
“This is the one,” she said, her voice low. “The finest vintage I own, bought from Horizon the first time I visited. Seems …appropriate.”
She tapped the cask with a small spigot and poured them all a glass. The liquid was red, red as blood and redder still, and smelled like a fairy had their way with an orchard. Tom took a deep breath of it, then passed in under Sesame’s nose. The bear gave it a curious sniff, then a small sneeze at the alcohol in it.
What’s that? Sesame asked him.
A drink for fallen friends, he replied.
It smells good and bad. Like the woods, but also …sharp, somehow. I don’t like it. I’d rather have honey.
Tom took the hint and produced a small pot for him. He was glad he’d bought as much as he could before leaving. He thought the Wayrest honey supply probably ought to be recovered by now after his purchases. Mostly recovered, anyway.
They drank in silence, watching the moon slide across the sky, listening to the grass shiver occasionally in the wind.
Eventually, they packed it in and went to sleep. They had, by some unspoken agreement, left all talk of what happened, any talk of what to do, any adjustments to be made, any skills or uplifts they had gained, ‘til the morning.
Tom smiled to himself. For once, he had nothing to share on that front, and was perfectly happy with it. He fell into a deep, dreamless, sleep.
He had not, of course, seen his wisp pulse black against the velvet night sky.