Chương 57: Chapter 56 - First Flare

Ant woke to grey light and the smell of rain that hadn't arrived yet. He lay still a moment, cataloguing himself the way he'd learned to after a night on hard ground — shoulder stiff, but not in the way it usually was after a bad watch. He felt rested. All three of them did, going by the way Maren was already sitting up without complaint, and the way Raven's silhouette against the tree line stood upright and alert, like she'd never really needed the sleep in the first place.

They'd split the night three ways, an hour or two apiece, nobody carrying the whole weight of it alone. Somehow it had been enough. He sat up and breathed in properly. Wet bark, turned soil, that particular thickness in the air that showed up hours before the rain itself ever did. He'd never noticed it this clearly before Mahkir. Now it sat in his chest like something borrowed, sharper than it had any right to be.

You're doing the thing again, Mahkir said, not opening his eyes from where he'd curled against the pack. Standing very still and looking pleased with the air.

"I like the smell before rain." You like a great many small things. It's a wonder you get anywhere.

"You like sleeping in my collar and complaining about it. We've all got our indulgences." Mahkir cracked one eye open at that, unimpressed, and said nothing further, which Ant had learned counted as a concession. Raven was crouched near the dead fire, running a whetstone along one of her daggers in slow, unhurried strokes, not looking up when he stirred. Her osprey sat above her on a low branch, working at one wing with the kind of focus that suggested it had strong opinions about the current state of its feathers.

"Maren's readings put the rupture close. Ten minutes, maybe less," she said.

"Assuming she read them right."

"I read them right." Maren was still half-tangled in her bedroll, hair escaping whatever she'd tied it back with the night before, voice thick with sleep she was fighting off by will alone.

"I've checked that relay four times since we left the castle. It hasn't moved."

"I didn't say you were wrong." Raven sheathed the dagger, unbothered.

"I said assuming. There's a difference."

"There really isn't, the way you say it."

"There's a first time for everything." Raven's mouth twitched, brief, and she went back to checking the edge on the second of her daggers. Axel had already risen beside Maren, arms crossed in that way he had that always looked more thoughtful than an ape built for hitting things had any right to look, watching the exchange with the patient, faintly amused stillness of someone who'd heard variations of it before and expected to hear more.

They ate standing, packing as they chewed, nobody much wanting to sit back down once they were up. The forest had that particular hush to it that came before weather — no wind yet, birds gone quieter than they'd been at first light, the whole treeline holding its breath for something that hadn't arrived.

"You good?" Maren asked him, quiet, once Raven had drifted a few paces off to check the ground for tracks.

"Nervous," Ant admitted.

"First one that's just us. No Kalsar standing behind me telling me when to move."

"You've fought worse than a low-tier flare without him standing behind you."

"That's not the same as doing it as somebody people are relying on." He shouldered his pack.

"If I get this wrong, it's not just me who pays for it."

"You won't get it wrong." She said it simply, like it wasn't up for debate, and moved off after Raven before he could find a way to argue with her about it. The walk ran closer to fifteen minutes than ten, the ground climbing in slow uneven steps through trees that pressed closer together the further they went, undergrowth thickening until Raven had to cut a path through bramble with the flat of her blade in two places. Nobody talked much once they got moving. Ant found he didn't mind the quiet.

It gave him room to notice things — the way Axel moved almost silently for something his size, the way Raven's osprey never seemed to land, gliding instead from branch to branch in wide unhurried loops that always kept the group in sight. Mahkir went rigid against his shoulder without warning, ears flat.

"There," he said, out loud this time, low. Ant felt it before he saw it — pressure without weight, a wrongness that didn't belong in a forest this loud with birdsong a few minutes ago and now gone entirely silent. Then the trees broke and the rupture sat in the clearing ahead of them, a jagged seam maybe eight feet across, violet light bleeding upward in slow unhurried threads, the soil at its edges curled back like something had punched through from beneath.

"Weaker than the last one," Mahkir said, head tilted, studying it with the same clinical patience he brought to everything that wasn't food or comfort.

"Thinner. Whatever's feeding it hasn't had long to work."

"That's the point," Maren said, already crouched at the rupture's edge with the relay held out, reading whatever it told her.

"Low-tier means low-tier. We're not here to prove anything. We're here to close it and get everyone home in one piece."

"Speak for yourself," Raven said, checking the strap on her arm guard. Her osprey lifted off the branch above her without being told, circling once before vanishing over the canopy. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. Ant drew Soul Render, the weight of it settling into his palm the way it always did now — familiar, almost calming, in a way that would have unsettled him three weeks ago.

"I lead. Maren, middle. Raven, you've got the rear."

"Copy that." They went in single file, the tunnel mouth swallowing the grey morning light within a dozen steps, the violet glow throwing everything into a flat, strange color that made the walls look wet even where they weren't. The air cooled fast, dropping enough that Ant felt it through his coat within the first minute. Water dripped somewhere off to the left with a rhythm too even to be natural, counting down something none of them could hear the end of. No wraithkin.

Not one, the whole way down — just the passage narrowing and widening in turns, the pressure building steadily against Ant's skin the deeper they went, thick enough by the final stretch that he found himself breathing through his mouth without deciding to. The tunnel opened into a wide cavern at the back, and the smell changed entirely the moment they crossed the threshold. Something sour underneath the mineral cold. Something that had been feeding, and feeding recently. Eight of them.

Small, huddled in a loose cluster near the center of the chamber, low to the ground the way young things stayed low, still mid-feed on something Ant didn't let himself look at directly. How are there still this many being born, he thought, and hated that the question had room to surface even here, even now, with eight sets of hollow eyes about to turn their way. What's making them. What keeps making them, after three hundred years. He shoved it down. Not the time.

It took maybe half a second for the nearest of them to catch Mahkir's scent, and less than that for feeding to turn to defense — eight shapes snapping upright at once, the whole cluster breaking apart into motion, none of it coordinated, all of it fast. They came in a disorganized rush, no formation to speak of, and Ant felt the old flicker of fear arrive and pass through him almost before he'd registered it — quicker now, quieter, an old friend rather than a stranger showing up uninvited.

He and Maren took the first one together, Axel a half-step ahead of her, absorbing the opening strike on a raised forearm before Ant's blade found the gap it left behind. Three more went for Raven, her osprey already stooping out of the dark above with talons extended, a dagger already in her free hand before the first of them had closed half the distance. The last three broke for Mahkir.

Focus on your own fight, Mahkir said, sharp, almost reprimanding, the way he got when he thought Ant's attention was drifting somewhere it shouldn't. These aren't strong enough to need your worrying. Ant let him have it. Weeks in Kalsar's yard had built something into all three of them that hadn't existed a month ago — not just skill, but the particular trust that let a person stop watching someone else's fight long enough to finish their own.

Soul Render moved clean through the second wraithkin while Maren drew the third's attention wide with a clumsy, effective feint she'd clearly worked out on her own in the last few weeks, and by the time he turned to check on Mahkir, all three of his were already down, thin smoke rising off collapsing, scorched shapes.

Raven finished her last a breath later, her osprey diving talons-first onto its shoulders while she put a dagger through it from below in the same motion, economical, no wasted movement anywhere in it. She was already wiping the blade clean before the body had finished settling. The moment the last one fell, the room changed. Threads of energy lifted off each collapsing body, drawn inward toward the chamber's center in slow, converging lines, gathering weight as they went.

"Get ready," Maren said, already backing a step, voice gone tight.

"That's not done." It gathered into shape at the center of the room — something built of shadow and violet light, roughly the size of a lion, and it came up already furious at having been disturbed. It didn't hesitate over targets. It went straight for Axel, the biggest shape in the room, the obvious threat by size alone.

Axel met it without flinching, skin shifting to something harder than skin should be able to become, and the creature that had clearly expected him to go down simply bounced, stunned for the half-second that cost it everything. Mahkir and the osprey moved together without needing to discuss it — flame roaring out low and controlled at Ant's silent command, the osprey diving from above to rake at whatever passed for its head.

It lasted maybe thirty seconds under that kind of pressure before the accumulated damage finally caught up with it, folding in on itself in a final collapse of light and going still. The chamber held its quiet a moment after, nobody moving, everyone still half-braced for something else to come out of the dark. Nothing did.

Ant felt it building through the whole fight without really registering it as anything separate from the fight itself — a steady, cumulative pull each time a wraithkin came apart, experience pouring into him and into Mahkir in the same quiet current, kill after kill after kill, until the shadow-thing's final collapse tipped the whole accumulated weight of it over some threshold he hadn't been watching for. His system chimed mid-fall, and he only let himself look at it now, chest still working to slow down.

Wraithkin (Weak) x8 defeated. Wraithkin (Core) x1 defeated. Experience gained: 3, 560. Level up. He pulled the screen up properly. User: Anthony Byrren User Level: 8 Str: 25 End: 28 Magic: 5 Agi: 32 HP: 70/70 Mana: 50/50 Eight. He stood with that a moment, the number settling into place the way each of them did now — less like a surprise, more like confirmation of something he'd already half-felt happening in his own arms and legs over the last several fights. Not nothing.

He let out a breath he hadn't noticed holding. He checked Mahkir's screen next, out of habit more than expectation. No chime had come from that direction during the fight, and the numbers confirmed why — the same 3, 560 sitting banked against him, no level attached to it. Nothing for me, Mahkir said, unbothered, already grooming a streak of ash out of his fur. I felt it land, same as you did. Didn't feel like enough. Hasn't, off anything this small, in a while.

"You can tell that? How close you are?" Not the number. Never the number. He paused, tail curling once. Just a sense of it. Whether it's close or it isn't. The violet haze thinned and receded fast, and what it left behind was disappointing — bare stone, no scattered equipment, nothing obviously worth carrying out. Somebody had cleared this one recently. Recently enough that nothing had had time to settle back in.

"Empty," Raven said, crouched near the chamber wall, running a hand along bare stone.

"Somebody beat us to it, and not that long ago either."

"Trip wasn't wasted, though," Ant said, and meant it, still feeling the level-up settle into him. He crossed to where a single gem sat half-buried in the dust near the chamber's center — the only thing the room had left behind — and knelt, fingers closing around it.

"Don't bother carrying that around expecting coin for it," Raven said, watching him.

"Rare enough to find one at all — most vortices don't leave anything behind like it — but people tried working them into weapons and armor years back, and it never took. Adds nothing. Doesn't even hold a proper shine for jewelry, not that anyone's ever asked."

"So it's junk."

"Pretty junk, sometimes." She shrugged, already turning back toward the tunnel mouth.

"There's an old story that Kithren who eat them get lucky. Skill, strength, whatever they're short on. Never met anyone who's actually seen it happen, mind. The kind of thing people say to make a worthless rock sound worth carrying." Ant closed his hand around it anyway. Worth a try, if nothing else — Mahkir had earned that much off a fight that hadn't given him anything. The moment his fingers closed around it, his screen flared to life without being asked. Magic Gem detected. Would you like to absorb the Magic?