Chương 12: Chapter 13: Moonlight

They camped on the ridge. Common sense said they shouldn't. The clearing reeked of blood and acid, and the carcass of a Level 57 Wyvern lay in broken pieces not far below, already drawing flies and bold carrion birds. But common sense wasn't calibrated for high-level ecology. Wyvern ruled these heights. Anything that smelled that corpse and understood what it was would also understand something worse had killed it. The scavengers that didn't know what it was would just smell danger and stay away.

For one night, at least, the ridge was about as safe as the wilderness got. So they stayed. They skipped the fire. Too visible. Instead, Ivan scratched simple [Light] sigils onto a flattish rock and linked them into a damped loop. Enough to see each other's faces. Not enough to carry from the valley. Ren had fallen asleep almost as soon as he lay down, exhaustion finally cashing the checks adrenaline had written.

He was a lump of beast-hide blankets near the lee side of a boulder, tail poking out from under the cloth like a loose question mark. Ivan sat his watch on the edge of the ridge, boots dangling over a drop that fell away into darkness. The sky above was clear. No clouds. No smoke. Nothing between him and the impossible amount of space overhead. The moon was out, swollen and silver, painting the broken stones in cold light. He leaned back on his hands and stared upward.

Ten years in a badly lit office room did strange things to your sense of scale. The ceiling of the Production Hall had been maybe three meters up, cracked plaster and old mana conduits. That had been his sky. You could touch it if you climbed on a table. This? This was the System's status screen for the world. He had forgotten how many stars there were. Ivan let his [Mana Sense] idle at the edges of perception. No big signatures nearby.

A few faint animals picked through the lower slopes, something slinked along a game trail to the west, and Ren's sleeping presence sat behind him like a small warm knot in the dark. Nothing tripped the new, quiet instinct lurking under his skin. [Instinct of the Prey] sat like a coiled spring at the base of his spine, not active, just... there. He could get used to that.

"Can't sleep?" he asked. He wasn't talking to ghosts. The new skill hummed right before Rys walked behind him, a soft brush of awareness that said someone was approaching with no hostile edge. He felt her before he heard her. He glanced back. Rys padded into the little circle of light, barefoot on stone. She had stripped down the top layer of her clothes and rinsed off the worst of the gore. The linen was cleaner now, but still ragged, clinging to her in ways that would have started brawls back in taverns.

Her hair was down, falling loose around her shoulders in waves of pink that caught the moonlight, ears flicking idly.

"No," she said, lowering herself onto the rock beside him.

"You were sitting too close to the edge. I wanted to see whether you meant to fall."

"Sorry to disappoint," Ivan said.

"Still breathing."

"Barely. Your Health dropped low enough earlier that even I had to watch it." She pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, chin resting atop. For a moment she didn't say anything. She only watched the sky with half-lidded eyes. The wind toyed with a loose strand of her hair. She didn't bother to tuck it back.

"You were staring up like someone had written your name there," she said.

"Old lover hidden among the stars?"

"Something like that," Ivan muttered. Rys hummed. It could have meant anything. Ivan wasn't really in the mood to talk, so he let the silence stretch. Comfortable enough. The ridge filled in the gaps: night insects clicking, distant wingbeats that definitely weren't Wyvern-sized, and the faint scrape of Ren's claws against rock as he shifted in his sleep.

"Was it like this?" Rys asked suddenly. Ivan glanced at her.

"What?"

"Your old sky. Before all this." She gestured vaguely with one hand: the Integration, the System, the monsters.

"When you were still a city-soft little thing. Did it look the same?" He thought back.

"It was... dirtier," he said.

"More light pollution. Fewer stars. But the moon looked about the same. It's a rock. It doesn't care about global catastrophes."

"Ah. Your clever little machines." She smiled faintly.

"I have seen pictures. Cities so bright the night cannot enter them. Wasteful."

"It was," he admitted.

"We wasted a lot of things." Rys tilted her head, studying him.

"Do you miss it?"

"Sometimes. Mostly stupid things. Food I can't make anymore, hot showers maybe." Ivan shifted his hands against the cold stone.

"But I don't miss the rest as much as I thought I would."

"Hot baths still exist."

"Hey, it's not the same thing."

"You say that as a man who currently has neither." Ivan laughed a little. That was irritatingly hard to argue with.

"What about you?" he asked.

"What did your sky look like before Vas ended up here in Veyshore?" Rys looked at the moon again.

"Softer… No, that isn't quite right." She went quiet, trying to find the words instead of reaching for the first answer that sounded good.

"The stars, they seemed closer and more together," she continued.

"More woven. Vas already had magic before the System, and there was much more mana in the air. On clear nights, you could see purple and green light above the mountain from my shrine."

"Auroras?" Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"If that is what your people called them. Sometimes the light almost formed shapes, although staring too long usually meant you saw whatever you wanted to see."

"Sounds nice."

"It was." Rys drew one knee closer to her chest.

"It really was…" she fell quiet for a bit, and then added, "Pilgrims used to climb the hill and sleep outside because they believed the goddess would speak to them in their dreams. Mostly they woke up with colds, but they kept coming back."

"Did she ever speak to them? Your Goddess, I mean,""Not… recently. Not where I could hear." Her mouth curved slightly.

"They still bought fortune slips before going home, so I did my work and kept my doubts to myself."

"Very pious of you."

"I kept the shrine roof repaired. Yueko could complain if she wished." That sounded more like the Rys he knew, but the small smile didn't last.

"When the Integration happened, half the mountain disappeared in an instant. Reality was cut in the middle," she said.

"The mana conversion alone killed dozens. But we kept the shrine open afterward because people needed something familiar, I think. The bells still rang at the same hour. The old women still came to complain about their knees, and young men still found reasons to bother the attendants… for a while." Her fingers tightened around her leg.

"Then the Consortium came, and none of those familiar things helped." Ivan remembered what she had said beneath the roots. Moon Festival. People getting all distracted, and dozens dead.

"How long were you in cages after that?"

"Three months in the caravan. Before that, I don't know." Her ears lowered.

"Time became difficult once every room was dark and the collar punished me whenever I gathered too much mana."

"Did you still pray?"

"At first." Rys rubbed two fingers together as if there should have been ash between them.

"I still do sometimes. Habit, perhaps. But when I light incense now, it is for the dead. If Yueko is still listening, she can decide what that means. And if she abandoned us, that is between me and her. I am not taking favors from another altar simply because I am angry." Ren shifted behind them, claws scraping lightly against the rock. Rys stopped talking until he settled again. Ivan had assumed the blessing she carried came from one of her old gods.

Apparently not, or at least the relationship was more complicated than that.

"What about you?" she asked.

"Did you pray before the Tutorial?"

"Not really. I was one of those people who claimed to believe in nothing but still felt a little guilty during religious holidays." Rys gave a quiet huff.

"Convenient."

"It wasn't. It was mostly confusing."

"And now? Now that you know Gods do exist…" Gods? Are they really? Ivan thought about the Serpent of Blackglass and the interest it had shown in Victor. There were countless so-called "gods" now, including the Twelve Primordials playing games with people for reasons nobody had bothered explaining.

"I know they exist," he said.

"That isn't the same as thinking any of them deserve worship. Victor has one leaning over his shoulder, and it hasn't improved him."

"No," Rys agreed.

"I suppose it hasn't." They watched the moon for a little while after that. Rys had apparently not forgotten their earlier conversation, because when she spoke again, she said, "You never told me why you stayed behind when Julianne left." Ivan glanced at her.

"You didn't ask."

"I am asking now." He smoothed a hand through his hair, buying time.

"After my parents died, I stopped making plans. Not really on purpose. I just kept doing the next safe thing." He paused, then continued because that sounded like an excuse even to him.

"Julianne had been a friend from even before the System came. Maybe tha's why she wanted me to leave the shitty life I had in Sky Reach and take bigger risks. Better dungeons, better experience, all of that. I thought she was rushing." Rys waited.

"Or maybe I needed her to be wrong," Ivan admitted.

"If she was being reckless, then staying behind wasn't cowardice. It was the sensible choice. I had always been the sensible one between the two of us…"

"And was it?" Ivan Mercellion did not have an answer for that. And yet, tonight, sitting on a ridge with a dead Wyvern below him and Victor somewhere across the wilderness wanting him dead, the answer leaned heavily in one direction.

"She asked again later," Ivan said.

"The last time we spoke through a communication crystal, she told me I would rot in Sky Reach if I stayed."

"Did you?" That made him laugh.

"No, actually. I got thrown out first." Rys laughed, although she covered it quickly when Ren moved again.

"I think you should let her know," she said, "that you're coming. I think she'll be happy." She seemed to expect him to get defensive and say no but Ivan didn't have anything to say to that. After a moment, he asked, "You said you ignored warnings before Veyshore was attacked. What warnings?" Rys's tail curled more tightly around her ankles.

"I dislike whenever you change topics," she clicked her tongue.

"Well, whatever. Ships disappeared back then and caravans stopped arriving, and people with enough money to be protected started vanishing from the sea paths. I told the attendants that Veyshore was too small to matter. The Consortium had richer ports to raid." Her claws pressed into the cloth over her knees.

"I was wrong."

"You couldn't have known where they would attack."

"No, Ivan. I knew enough to ask questions. I did not." That was the part she couldn't release. Ivan understood it a little better now. The ships she wanted to burn weren't only about what had been done to her afterward.

"And now you stay because of Ren," he said.

"Partly." Rys looked back at the sleeping boy.

"Leaving him simply because the northern road was easier would not have fixed anything. But I would have known exactly what I was doing this time." She returned her attention to Ivan.

"And then there is you. Not to praise you too much, but I have watched men with far more power look away when chains passed in front of them. You didn't. I don't know whether that was bravery or whether something in your head is damaged, but..." Rys stopped, visibly annoyed that the sentence had gone where it had.

"I was glad you did it," she finished. To Ivan, that situation was just numbers since that was easier. Fifteen slavers had died. Rys and Ren were out of collars. So the logic worked. But she wasn't asking him for a logical anything, so for once he left it alone. A yawn caught Rys before she could hide it. She covered her mouth, ears lowering briefly in embarrassment.

"Go sleep," Ivan said.

"I am not tired."

"You nearly swallowed your own face."

"Is that what Earth people call a yawn?" She shifted closer while saying it, then rested her head against his shoulder before Ivan understood what she was doing. Her full weight settled against him, making him adjust his balance near the edge.

"... Comfortable?" he asked.

"Mmm, comfortable enough." She moved her head once, getting her hair out from beneath her cheek.

"You are warmer than the stone." Her tail slowly curled across his shins.

"Wake me if that new instinct warns you about anything," she murmured.

"I will." Within a minute, her breathing had evened out. Ivan remained still, aware of the warmth pressing through his shirt and the strands of pink hair brushing his jaw. Ivan stared at her, expression dry. Was she doing this deliberately? Rys knew what her face and body could do to men, and Ivan wasn't going to forget that merely because she had said something sincere. But after a few breaths, her head slipped slightly lower and all her weight settled against him.

She had nearly been crushed by a Wyvern that afternoon. Maybe she was only exhausted. Still, she trusted him enough to sleep. Ivan could accept that without deciding it meant anything else. But the glowing prompt at the edge of his vision refused to let him enjoy the quiet for long. [The Living Vellum] This thing had been pulling at his interest for a while now. According to its description, a typical Scribe believed the world suffered from a lack of surfaces.

But thanks to this skill, the Inscriber of Principles could utilize the only surface he could truly control. Himself.