Traveling resumed the next morning with the open fields growing upward into forest. They'd take infrequent breaks to check the map but largely the last leg of the trip was sitting and getting new bruises on their rumps. The wizard, energized by the power of the devil bean of coffee, had stayed up all night and well into the morning before crashing around midday and assaulting everyone present with a nose orchestra that rose above every other sound to chip at their ears.
Clarke checked the map as they came closer to the treeline, identifying a large stone used as a guide marker. They were probably very near the area itself, described in the margins of the map as “geometrically placed stone homes”.
“We should probably stop here before we get to the actual spot and walk in in the morning. It's not good to sit right on top of where you plan to venture.”
Wade snorted and snapped the reins of the horses to push them on a little faster.
“What would you know about it, bookworm? It's better to have our supplies where we'll actually be working. Idiot...”
Gwen laughed this time, pointing back at Clarke.
“Do you even know who this guy is-”
“Course I know. He's a book loving twerp who doesn't know jack about man's work.”
Gwen made to correct him but Clarke shook his head, giving her the best 'zip your lip' expression he could through pure facial messaging.
The cart rattled to a stop nearing nightfall and Wade checked the map, holding it up and then down to look at the landscape.
“We there?”
Gwen stood beside him to look around the area, peeking through the trees and clinking her metal covered knuckles in lieu of any ability to crack them. She'd been pretty excited to have them on for her arrival, about being 'dressed for the occasion'.
Wade covered his eyes against the failing sun jabbing at his eyes through the trees then fade to black.
“I don't...know. We're looking for a bunch of hills with holes in the side. Hill houses.”
He kept on looking with map in hand despite the failing light and Gwen watching, leaving Clarke and Feathers to the work and Hrmph to weigh the cart down with his sleeping body and Louise to bring out the food. Feathers paused by Clarke, setting stones in a circle and clearing out the middle for a fire.
“Do you think we'll start tonight? It's getting a bit dark to wander in the forest, right?”
He looked off into the trees with their long shadows blending as light failed and everything beyond fading to advancing darkness. Clarke shook his head.
“Well, good sense would suggest we bed down and get our bearings in the morning.”
“Hey, let's get some torches and have a look around!”
Wade yelled. Feathers gulped, wringing his hands and almost pleading with Clarke via look to tell him he hadn't heard that.
“Good sense is not friends with that man. Ignore that and get to cooking.”
Clarke approached the two clueless adventurer's nightmares.
“You guys having fun?”
Gwen nodded, missing the babyish tone he'd taken with them and Wade ignored him talking at all and held out his hand.
“Torch.”
Clarke grabbed his hand and jerked him around so he was sure Wade was actually looking him in the eye.
“That's not a good idea. We should sleep for the night and get started in the morning.”
“Shouldn't you be the most used to slinking around at night? I saw the maps the old pointy ears made, we can pop in, pop out and leave in the morning. If we're quick about it we get a bonus and a lot more jobs.”
Clarke nodded, smiled.
“Uh huh, yeah. Do you know what else gets a lot more work? Being alive. Do you know how many groups came here before us? Did you read the notes Whilaway gave us?”
Wade clicked his tongue. By now the others were pretending not to watch as they settled in and he looked to them, his jaw clenching. He tried to retort when Clarke cut him off.
“Six. We're the seventh group to come out here. Why? What happened to the other groups?”
“They...a monster probably. It's a cave or a little house, probably some bear or something. We'll find the hole, piss it off and kill it. Not hard.”
“Probably. Probably a bear.”
The tension in Clarke's neck had jabbing prickles across his shoulders. The sheer uncertainty of Wade's assessment infuriated him. Not a single drop of planning or preparedness short of bringing food had come into this from Wade's side.
He took a breath calm himself.
“Listen to me you empty-headed glory hound jack off.”
It didn't work.
“There is no reason at all to wander around in the dark, even with torches. It's an unnecessary risk and they don't give you extra points for speed. We need to wait for morning and pile up our advantages. Are you in some kind of hurry or something?”
For once, without the ban on interfering with adventurers in the way, it felt good to tell someone just how stupid they were. The usual knot of tamped down vitriol was vanishing with each word of advice but Wade was starting to shake with every word.
“I am in charge he-!”
“Then act like it! Your JOB is to have a plan! Your JOB is to keep these people alive!”
Fists raised on both sides and Gwendolyn intervened, giant mitts pushing them apart and her own yelling joining in.
“Now cut it out! A good group doesn't fight.”
Wade growled, leaning into Clarke's face.
“Yeah, a GOOD group...”
The surprised scream punctuated the dark forest, a burst of flame shooting up from the wagon.
“What now!?”
Wade yelled.
The wizard had woken from his snoring stupor and, for whatever reasons, had immediately gone to spewing fire from his hands and beating something on fire with a sack while everyone watched. Argument on hold, the three rushed to the campsite and whatever was going on. Wade spoke first, trying to retain his leadership role.
“What is it?”
The wizard's chest rose and fell, little veins sticking out on his head.
“It surprised me is all.”
On the ground was the half burned corpse of a fairy, only about as big as a human hand and mostly human looking with insect features. Its little gossamer wings continued to slowly burn away, compound eyes staring up into the sky with the nasty smell of burning skin rising up to them. Clarke knelt down, getting a look at it before it had entirely lost its shape to the fire.
“It was a butterfly fairy. Pretty harmless unless you're a flower.”
Louise gasped, dropping to her knees and mumbling prayers over the thing and tracing simple symbols in the air as wards against evil and well wishings in death.
“You've cursed us! It's very bad luck to kill those!”
The wizard grumbled.
“Well how was I supposed to know!? It fell on me out of nowhere.”
Fell?
Clarke looked from the body to the forest ceiling. His ears had been so used to the constant drone of snoring that he'd drowned out all other noises. There was no wind to feel and no light to see by but the leaves overhead rustled and now that he consciously listened he heard a constant noise just above a low hum. Something was above them and no one could see.
“Wizard, light a fire. A torch, the campfire, something.”
His hand glowed orange, arcane symbols floating around it until fire flicked to the ground and filled the circle of stones, lighting up sticks and leaves.
Everyone was silent as light washed around the area from below, illuminating what was hidden by the night into view.
Small flying fairies sped overhead, bodies coated in bands of black and yellow. With the rising flame a few paused in mid-air, their wings flashing too fast to see but their little mouths twisted in snarl at the intruders they'd largely ignored. Clarke's voice caught in his throat but he forced the words around the ball of horror.
“Son of a bitch, we're standing under a yellow-jacket fairy nest!”
From tree to tree the papery walls of a hive extended, built one atop the other in hexagons that crawled with white larvae. The insect buzz filled the air as they riled, swooping down upon them in angry passes, their inch long stingers flashing by their heads.
“Run!”
Clarke yelled, snatching up a stick as everyone scrambled away into the woods. His knife came to hand, tore through his shirt. Knife back in place and he tore the shred of cloth to swirl around the stick. A small bottle of something from his coat and thrust into the fire. The torch blazed up to illuminate the forest, pushing back the blackness so they could see. He jumped as he came upon a fallen tree, turning to see where everyone was.
Wade and Feathers were close behind him, Gwen pumping her legs twice as hard to keep up but the less physical were lagging, almost overtaken by the swarm darting above them.
The wizard turned and shouted enchantments, his hands firing off huge blasts of flame that ignited the trees around them, groups of the insects blown away in ash but others darting in where his attention was away. A stinger jabbed into his leg and he fell to a knee, screaming as fire poured from his hands around him.
Louise screamed as a darting bug zipped by her, jabbing her in a split second. Her hands came together and a bright blue glow enveloped her, a bubble forming a shield of light. More descended on her as the shield became a beacon for attack.
“We have to help them!”
Gwen yelled as she caught up to them, desperately pointing back. Clarke knew that leaving them behind would be the best way for the rest of them to escape safely and come up with a plan for later. He remembered Whilaway's words and he felt the smallest bit of shame in all his practicality.
Use them as you see fit.
“We'll die if we try to do anything! We need to run!”
The look she gave him was enough to really rub that feeling of shame in, the disgust in her face that he could be how he'd always been. Her lip trembled, terror in her eyes at leaving others to die.
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“You're not really...the Reap-”
Clarke knew what word was just on the tip of her tongue and it bit into his heart to imagine her saying it. The girl he'd always heard such happy stories of for so many years. This was exactly what he hadn't wanted her to see, how harsh the adventuring world was and how the practical thrived where the heroic died.
“Fuck, fine! Run! You're a one on one fighter, you can't do anything against this.”
He shouted at Feathers, pushing her to him.
“Take her with you!”
He grabbed Wade, shouting for him to stop as the fire spread around them.
“Alright, you're helping me!”
“What? Can't you see-”
Clarke pointed to a log, smashing a few bottles of alcohol over its surface. Then Wade's flask splashed over the surface, swiped from his pocket.
“Pick it up, now!”
“And what?!”
With no other plan he did as told, the wasps catching up to them as the others were covered over in the attacking creatures and barely fighting them off. Clarke ran his torch over the dry bark, igniting it as Wade lifted the log up, rotting bits falling away as his muscles strained and he held it like a giant maul.
“We're burning it all.”
Wade caught on and hefted the log up into the highest branches, licking flame catching the leaves and smoke beginning to fill the air. Wasps rushed at him and Clarke stepped out front, swigging deep from the flask and spitting through his torch.
The wasps screeched and their chitin burst as it suddenly caught fire. They advanced, Clarke spitting flame where he could and Wade spreading the blaze as he walked, swatting groups of the monster fairies out of the air.
Sweat poured over their skin, neither able to catch their breath without sucking in smoke or having to spit across the torch.
But they'd made it.
Wade waved his log at the wasps and they scattered.
The wizard hopped up, his clothing torn and fat welts rising across his arms.
“Go! Back that way!”
He said nothing, hobbling away as fast as he could with every step a fresh jab of pain from all the wasp venom.
“I don't think we need to worry about the sister, Clarke.”
Wade nodded to the fading light, then the constant pulsing mass of wasps jabbing her body to the tune of high pitched screams until they abruptly ceased.
Clarke took a last breath and swig, rushing to her and spewing fire across the mass of insects. The pile lit up, the insects taking off and crashing into the forest floor. Clarke sucked wind, sweat pouring down his face.
Her pulse was gone.
“Let's get ahead of the fire.”
The giant log crashed to the ground behind them and they ran until their shadows were cast out in long paths ahead of them into the trees. The wizard limped ahead, Feathers and Gwen much further out beyond the tree line. A high pitched hum of beating wings and vocal tearing shriek got Clarke's legs moving and he wasted a glance behind to confirm what he thought he knew.
The Queen was coming up behind them.
He dropped to his belly as the huge fairy sped by, stinger missing him by inches. It's speed was incredible, its body outlined in some magical purple aura that was likely the cause. The queen wasp, as big as a human child and stinger like a rapier, turned on them with her lips pulled back in fury and mandibles extending from her mouth. The queen wasp, the only member of the hive with magic and any semblance of human intelligence or emotion.
Oh my god, we just killed her entire family...
She didn't stop, zipping ahead in zig zag lines that trailed behind her until she was upon the wizard. He didn't even turn before he was impaled through the back, falling limp to the ground as she jerked her stinger out of him in bloody arc and circling back to them.
Clarke's mind raced, checking the contents of his jacket for anything he could use to hit a speedy, flying insect. Besides poison, explosives and caltrops he didn't have anything...except...
“Come on! Come get me bug!”
Wade screamed, pounding his chest with his fists in lieu of a mace. He swung at it but it dipped and dodged, swinging its bladed stinger at him and ripping through his clothing and muscle. He screamed and chased it, trying desperately to grab the too speedy bug and completely ignoring every bloodletting cut he withstood.
An arrow whiffed between them, catching the Queen's attention. Feathers knelt far back and fired, his shots easily dodged but earning him her attention. She raced his way like a living arrow stinger first, shock evident on his face as he panicked, fumbling his next arrow into the dirt as she raced up on him. His arms came up to cower under and her stinger stabbed down, and snapped.
Gwen stood before Feathers, her arm extended to catch the blow. She brought her right fist around and layed a hard blow into the Queen as she tried to drift back.
The queen hovered, her speed the same but unsure of herself even in her rage. Magic boiled up around her, purple turning dark as it was tempered by her emotions and whatever spell she was casting causing her stinger to regrow, jutting free of her abdomen, freshly sharpened.
Between the dark and distance Clarke had no confidence his throw would make it but he pitched, watching the bottle miss the Queen and breaking against the ground. Close enough was good enough in horse shoes and explosives though as strings of webbing exploded out in grabbing tendrils that Gwen jumped back from, dragging Feathers behind. Her feet and wings became ensnared and she pulled and twisted, more of the fluttering strands falling on her until she crashed to the ground caught in a trap specifically meant for her kind.
Clarke and Wade came closer,
“Do we kill her?”
Gwen asked. Wade didn't wait for anyone to come up with any complicated moral dilemmas about killing a helpless semi-intelligent animal. He crushed her skull into the earth, ichor splattering around it. Gwen and Feathers looked sick but Clarke hurried them along away from the forest and out into the relative safety of the plains.
The fire burned until morning.
---------------------------------------------------
The night was miserable, tending to wounds and sleeping on hard earth. Clarke didn't sleep at all, staying up to record the fresh horrors of the night and watch that the fire didn't spread out to the plains and catch them all in dreamland. Luckily it hadn't and had slowly burned itself out by morning.
No food made for a quick breakfast and they entered the forest to find their previous camp blackened to a crisp with huge chunks of ash from the nests raining down in balls of ash. The cart was nowhere to be seen but the tracks turned off towards the plains and numerous weapons littered the ground, some point down, others buried in burned clumps when they'd fallen from their position up in the trees as part of the nest.
Wade examined the tracks.
“Horses managed to run away, thankfully. We might see them if we search a little. Hey, Chicken!”
It took Feathers a moment to realize he was being called.
“Uh, Wade, sir, it's, uh, it's Feathers.”
“Not the way you fight. Go get the horses. That seems like something you can't screw up.”
He slapped him on the back, pushing him towards the fields. Gwen frowned at that.
“He did his best.”
“Yeah, well his best did nothing. Even that wizard was a hell of a lot more help and he's dead. Even ratlet was more help and he's a writer.”
Wade didn't bother to lower his voice and Feathers, filled with the same encouragement he'd gotten from his family, slunk off to search.
Irritable, grumpy and bad tempered were good descriptors of Clarke's mood so, more to spare himself a headache than protect the others, he'd stepped away from the camp with the notes. There was still a job to do and he'd taken to searching back and forth in a semi-circle around the camp. Leaving quickly was now a much bigger issue since he just assumed the food wasn't coming back.
Can't believe she almost called me that...instead of dying, you could have raised your own damn kid, Pen!
Another hill crested and then rows upon rows of small hills, each one equidistance from the next and covered in a thick layer of dirt and grass. He approached the closest one and circled it, the door missing somewhere under the earth layer but a gaping hole where a window once lay unbroken inviting him in.
He held his breath at the dark hole, listening for several long seconds but not the faintest hum of wings or slither of sleeping beast came back out.
From his jacket he produced a thick bottle, another little bottle inside melded to the bottom. A quick turn of the cap and it smashed, the liquids mixing together until a bright green glow shone from it.
The hole illuminated as he entered, glow washing over a floor of dry, rotted leaves and smooth stone. The walls were smooth to the touch, like perfect cold metal. Two chairs and a crude wooden table, clear of anything, several shelves with nothing but rotted books spilling off the edge that were growing tiny plants from their pages. A multitude of little cabinets and a door on one side of the small room. Suspicions turned fact when he pulled it open and a dirt wall stared back, chunks spilling in.
Something like a wizard atelier.
He got to work searching. The books were all completely molded over, growing small leafy greens out of the top and every cabinet was filled with glasses and dishes or more rotted away post-things now become dirt.
If I were a wizard where would I hide something?
“Hey Clarke? Clarke?”
“I'm in here. Follow the light.”
“Not something you want to hear after almost dying.”
She crawled through the open window, the glass breaking off as she squeezed through.
“Is this it?”
“One of them. We'll probably have to search them all.”
“You find whatever it is yet?”
“Nope. Although-”
A dresser warped by years of weather had made it off balance and it crashed to the ground easily to reveal a safe inlaid into the wall.
“That was about the only easy place left to look. You want to try opening it?”
“Ooh, yes.”
She studied it closely by the green light, running a finger around the edge to create a screeching metal on metal. She reared back and hammered it with a fist to put a small dent in it.
“So, can you believe Wade? How he just started in on Feathers?”
“He's always been like that. On the one hand, he's honest. On the other, he's a bully. But Feathers doesn't have any business being here if we're honest. Just because you make weapons doesn't mean you need to wield them.”
Her second blow put a much deeper dent in it.
“How can you say that? He's just nervous and getting his bearings.”
“He could die. Two people did die, we all almost caught fire. I have it all written down if you need me to read it to you.”
“...no...”
Klang.
The door dented again. Clarke could have melted it just as easily but it would have been a waste of resources and it gave her something to do.
“What did you think of me though? I did very well.”
“You did less than Wade.”
Her knuckles made the most awful shriek as they slid over the cover of the safe.
“I could have just as easily done what he did.”
“Yes.”
“Then why do you keep trying to stop me?!”
The safe popped open, the constant pounding having taken its toll on the inner workings. Clarke went to look in when she slammed her hand across the opening, clipping his nose.
The look she gave wasn't angry or even irritated and Clarke couldn't really place it as far as his knowledge of emotions went but it expected an answer. He knew what he had to say then, that the time had come and maybe he could protect her with the truth if constant denigration of her dreams hadn't worked.
“Because I don't want what happened to your father to happen to you. Many years ago I was your father's scribe and he died while we were out on an adventure.”
She nodded slowly, waiting for the rest of the story.
“Yeah, I know that.”
“What do you mean you know?!”
He shouted.
“Well, he talked about you a lot, by name. Said you were gloomy and quiet but smart as a whip. That you were very wizard.”
“Very wizard?”
“It's a dwarf saying. Since dwarves have a hard time absorbing magic power to become wizards they have to work a hell of a lot harder than anyone else.”
They were getting off track.
“So why do you want to be an adventurer!? And why do you want to travel with the guy your father died working with? That's a little macabre.”
“Because it's fun, dummy! I could die being a boxer. I could die being a glass blower. I could die from accidentally falling on a knife making a sandwich in my own shop! Why shouldn't I die doing something interesting? And my father was always so 'Clarke did this' and 'Clarke is such a smart boy' and 'Clarke would make a great husband wink wink' that I've known you my whole life even though we only met once! Why wouldn't I want to travel with you?”
He whirled around, then back, finger pointing at her, then back around to think. He turned once more.
“Your dad told me just before he died to take care of you. He told me to keep you from getting into the same kind of trouble he did, as an adventurer.”
“Yeah? Then why haven't I ever heard from you?”
“Because...because I'm just...”
His finger sunk.
“Well...I took care of you by supplying your grandmother with constant income...”
“I could have used a friend more than money.”
She took her hand down from the hole.
“Look, I don't think it was about me and I think you did your best in your way. I get that you hate people and you're grumpy and irritable but there's something good in you, hidden deep, deep down where you have to dig and dig to see it-”
“Thank you, very kind.”
“-but I think you need a friend too, sometimes. So come adventure with me and watch my back. This is your last chance to get in on it before I find a random group of cut throats and bandits to join and go down the wrong kind of path.”
He was rarely so beaten in a war of words over such a simple concept. Anyone else he could have brushed off and left to die but...Pen, her father, had just been so...nice to him for the time he knew him. A welcome change from the tormented years in Greater Rens and the upbringing he received from his teacher. He made the only noise he could manage in defeat.
“Rrrr...fine...”
Gwen leaped into the air, a YES on her lips but Clarke was hurrying past the defeat back to work.
He peeked into the safe. Some papers with some magical mandalas. The exact kind of thing a wizard would hide away. Any single spell took years and years of trying to create just to find the exact correct combination of near non-sense symbols.
But beneath the papers was a tiny stone, perfectly smooth. Not metal like the house but not stone.
Gwen, celebration over, looked at it as he picked it up, turning it over and over in his fingers.
“What is it?”
“Not sure. Does it open?”
A bright orange glow burst up from it, a sphere of words rotating round and round. It flew from his fingers in shock and he jumped for it, every contact jolting a pop of color and a renewed attempt to swipe it out of the air.
He caught it. Gwen rushed him, jerking around like a hummingbird trying to get a look.
“What was that?”
Clarke smiled, watching the renewed sphere grow to the size of a cabbage and hover over his hand. Words floated in curved sentences but each was legible.
“Magic.”
“Hey! If you guys aren't dead get your asses out here!”
Wade's yell floated faintly through the window.
“Guess we can go home.”
Clarke crawled through the window, waiting for Gwen as she came through behind.
“So now that that's all straightened out, you'll be my scribe when we get back, right?”
“What? NO!”
He turned, walking back to the former campsite.
“I was asked to look after you and scribe rules expressly forbid helping a client.”
He quickly walked away but she'd caught enough of the nuance in what he'd said to charge after him, beaming from ear to ear.
“So we're partners!”
“I didn't say anything like that.”
“So we're friends!”
“I didn't say anything like that either.”
“Then what did you say?”
“I didn't say anything.”
Change bothered Clarke. He didn't like to acknowledge it, liked to keep things the same as always. He did not hate the dwarf but he chose to ignore the mild change of admitting to friendship and just follow her around if it was necessary.
Wade stood in the middle of the former camp, facing a familiar group of lizardfolk and their burly leader. Feathers seemed particularly at ease for once, though he'd failed to find the cart or the horses.
“Clarke! Get your tail-less rat behind over here and tell me why these...”
He actually froze mid-sentence. There were enough lizards that even Wade had the good sense to hold his tongue.
“...lizardfolk want to speak with you.”
Clarke waved at Swampbelly, who waved back, taking Clarke's hand in for a hearty handshake and spoke in his usual throaty gravel.
“Good to see you Clarke. Almost didn't catch up when we heard you were coming out this way. Even more surprised to find all these people here, walking around and everything. The trees are just full of weapons for some reason.”
Clarke shrugged, addressing Wade's question.
“They're our ride home.”