Chương 9: Chapter 10: I’m going to be WHAT?

The forest grew denser around them. Ivan led the team, [Determined Step] carrying him through the underbrush as if it weren't there. He paced himself, letting the skill do just enough work to keep the roots from catching his boots. Rys made the same terrain look insulting, slipping over rocks and roots while Ren scrambled behind them, panting. Behind them, the roars grew louder. Snapping branches. Crashing trees.

"G-guys… It's tracking us!" Ren gasped.

"We smell like a butcher shop," Rys noted calmly. She didn't sound winded.

"Of course it's tracking us. It thinks we're dinner delivery." Ivan scanned the terrain. The ground was rising, becoming rockier. They needed shelter. Something like a defensible position. Or just somewhere to hide. His eyes scanned and… there! A cluster of massive roots from a fallen age-old tree, tangled together to form a natural hollow against a rock face. It looked like a tight space, but it was hidden.

"In there!" Ivan whispered, pointing. They dove into the hollow space, scrambling over mossy roots, just as the beast burst into the clearing they had vacated moments ago. It was a bear the size of a wagon, all pitch-black fur and too much muscle packed under the hide. Its eyes glowed red through the trees, which Ivan hated on principle. [Gurgling Dreadbear, Level 53] It sniffed the air, swinging its massive head back and forth. Ivan was quick to draw a spell that hid their scent.

A low growl rumbled in its chest, shaking the leaves. Ivan held his breath, pressing himself against the dirt. Beside him, Rys watched the creature with mild curiosity, which was either confidence or insanity. It made sense given she was higher leveled than it, but Ivan didn't want to bet his coins on a woman who'd been enslaved for possibly months with little food. The bear prowled closer. Its massive paws crushed saplings into kindling.

Ivan's hand moved slowly, imperceptibly sketching a [Glyph Suspension] circuit in the dirt. Just in case. If it found them, he'd blow its nose off. The bear sniffed again. It paused near their hiding spot. Had it caught a stronger scent downwind? Maybe it was a deer, or maybe another predator. It turned and lumbered away, crashing through the underbrush. They waited until the crashing faded deep into the trees. Finally, Rys let out the breath she'd been holding.

"Well. That was exciting."

"Too close," Ivan muttered. He dismissed the glyph, the mana fading. Ren looked as if he were about to be sick. He curled his knees to his chest.

"I want to go home." Rys patted his head, not unkindly.

"Patience, little one. We're working on it." Ivan pulled out the dried meat he'd looted. He tossed a piece to each of them.

"Eat. We stay here until dawn and uh no fires." Rys took a piece, inspecting it critically in the dim light.

"Smells like old boots. Not too bad."

"It's food." They ate in silence, the adrenaline fading into exhaustion.

"So," Rys said after a while, keeping her voice low.

"Asterion. Why there?"

"I have a friend," Ivan said after a moment. That wasn't any legendary secret he couldn't share.

"Her name's Julianne. She's someone I grew up with. She has been living in Asterion for years now. Says it's safe."

"Ah. She invited you?"

"I guess? Well, not recently." Rys stopped chewing.

"What do you mean?" Ivan took a little too long to answer.

"Three years ago she invited me. I, uh… didn't take her up on it, regretfully." Her ears rose slightly.

"Three years is a long time in this ruined world, Ivan. Does she even know you're coming?"

"... No. Communication crystals are expensive." Rys gave him a bewildered look. Shaking her head, she looked past him toward Ren. The boy had finished eating, but he still held the strip of dried meat between both hands, taking small bites as though someone might take it away.

"So you are hoping this woman still considers you a friend."

"We… had an argument. But I'm confident she still considers me a friend," Ivan said and Rys didn't look very convinced.

"Trust me on this. She works for Asterion's City Lord now, or at least she did the last time we spoke. She should have enough influence to get us inside. Probably."

"Hopefully, probably, maybe…" Rys repeated, not sounding comforted.

"More importantly," Ivan decided to be a little more truthful. Not the full truth, obviously. He wasn't that brave or that stupid. But enough.

"The City Lord of Sky Reach, the one who wanted to buy you… Victor Hargraves. He wants me dead. Thankfully his reach ends at the ocean." Rys raised an eyebrow.

"The Planet's Champion wants you dead? Hah, you do aim high. What did you do? Steal his favorite sword? Sleep with his mistress?"

"Broke a scroll he wanted." Rys waited for the rest. Ivan rubbed the back of his neck.

"That's all. The scroll was a little dangerous, and he forced me to work on it, then things went badly."

"Badly for whom?"

"Mostly him. Eventually me." She kept looking at him, so Ivan looked down at the food instead. He still didn't fully understand what had happened inside that workroom himself, so explaining it to Rys would only give both of them a headache. Plus he didn't want to. She was a stranger with her own secrets.

"You said your home was near Asterion," he said.

"Veyshore. It grew around a small Heart of Civilization, so it was barely a city. More like a town that had become very proud of itself." Rys picked at the edge of the meat with one claw.

"The surrounding land was beautiful. The food was… usually terrible. I managed a shrine above the town, quite a respectable position." I gave her a look.

"A shrine?"

"I told you, young man, I am older than I look." Her expression changed a little as she said it, the amusement leaving without fully disappearing.

"The Consortium came just before the Moon Festival. People were distracted, our guard was lower than it should have been, and so dozens died." Ivan had been about to say he was sorry, but the words already felt useless before they reached his mouth. She didn't need him apologizing for people he had never met.

"Do you know who survived?"

"No. They collared me before the fighting ended." That was worse than Ivan had expected. He passed her another piece of meat since he couldn't think of anything useful to say, and Rys accepted it without commenting.

"Let's go to Asterion first, what do you say?" he asked after a bit.

"Someone there might know what happened to Veyshore."

"Maybe." Ren had fallen asleep with the last piece of meat still in his hand. Ivan carefully took it before the boy rolled over on top of it, then pulled another hide across his shoulders.

"I'll take the first watch," Ivan said. Rys looked at his face.

"Sure? You nearly fell over earlier."

"Second watch, then."

"Better." Ivan lay down before she could point out anything else. He listened as Rys moved closer to the entrance, settling between them and the forest. The noises outside were still there, but at least every noise wasn't his problem alone anymore. Tomorrow, the long walk to the coast began. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

Ivan woke up with the distinct sensation that his spine had solidified into a question mark. Sleeping on top of roots was not fun. The hollow beneath the roots was dim, lit only by the grey filtered light of morning. Ren was still asleep near the far wall, curled into such a tight ball he looked like an oversized pill bug. The kid's tail twitched every few seconds. Probably a nightmare. Considering the last twenty-four hours, Ivan couldn't blame him. Rys, on the other hand, was awake. She wasn't sleeping.

She sat against the opposite earthen wall with her arms crossed, watching him, and Ivan jolted before he could stop himself. Her amber eyes were half-lidded but sharp, lacking that groggy glaze most people had in the morning. She looked like a statue abandoned in the woods, beautiful and a little unsettling. Her pink hair was a mess of tangles and leaves, but she wore the grime like it was intentional court fashion.

"Morning. You know, you stopped breathing three times last night," Rys said. Ivan rubbed at his face.

"Did I?"

"Yes, I counted," she said.

"I see… Nightmares, probably." He tried to remember what he had dreamed about and found nothing. Only the lingering feeling that something had been pressing down on his chest.

"Sorry if I woke you."

"The first time, I thought something had entered the hollow." She glanced toward the roots above them.

"If it happens again, I am waking you."

"Please do."

"With my foot, if necessary." Ivan decided not to ask where she intended to kick him. He crawled out of the hollow, his knees popping loudly as he stood.

"We should move before the Dreadbear decides to come back." Ivan stood up in the small clearing outside their hidey-hole. The forest was washed in pale morning mist. It was quiet. The birds were singing, which meant no large predators were immediately nearby. He checked his Status out of habit. Mana was back to full. [540/540]. Health was topped off. The bruise on his ribs had faded to a dull yellow throb. Ivan knelt in a patch of clear dirt and pulled a stick from his inventory.

He had paper but it'd be a waste to go through a dozen tests. So the dirt would have to do. He began scratching lines. Rys emerged from the hollow a moment later. She stretched, a long, feline movement that popped several joints in her back, before crouching beside him. Then she crouched beside him, watching the stick move through the dirt.

"Is this the same spell you used yesterday?" He continued working on it as he replied, "Same basic structure. The discharge wasted too much mana though, so I'm trying a smaller angle here." He drew the altered junction, then stopped before feeding mana into it.

"I see, I see. And what happens if the angle is wrong?" she asked.

"Don't worry, it won't explode," he reassured her. She was clearly worried about Ren.

"It should just fizzle a little. The circuit is only scratched into dirt."

"Should?" Her eyes moved toward the hollow, where Ren was still sleeping. Ivan rubbed out the active junction with his heel.

"I'll test it after we move." Rys remained crouched beside the ruined pattern.

"You don't chant. You don't carry a catalyst either. You really only need the lines? Such a strange mage you are."

"What's the point of a chant? The lines are the language here." Ivan tossed the stick aside and stood.

"At least they are for me."

"That is not how Scribes are supposed to work."

"No," Ivan admitted.

"It isn't." He still wasn't explaining the rest. Not while he barely understood what his new Class had done to him, and definitely not before he could trust her more.

"We should eat," he said, brushing the dirt from his hands.

"I want to move before the sun reaches the canopy." Breakfast was a sad affair. Dried meat that tasted like salted leather and water from a skin Rys had liberated from a dead slaver. Ren woke up looking like he'd gone ten rounds with a pugilist. Dark circles bruised the skin under his eyes, and he jumped at the sound of a twig snapping. They packed up in silence. There wasn't much to pack.

"This way," Ivan said, pointing slightly east of the sun.

"We stay off the game trails."

"That will slow us down," Rys noted.

"It also keeps us from walking into another Dreadbear. Or a patrol." Rys didn't argue, shrugging. She just signaled Ren to follow and fell into step beside Ivan. They began their journey.

It was a miserable trudge. The forest floor was uneven, slick with morning dew and cluttered with snagging roots. Ivan kept his [Mana Sense] active, pulsing it every few seconds like a sonar. The world flickered in his vision, grey trees overlaid with veins of blue life-force. Small critters scurried in the brush and a deer watched them from a ridge. Once, Ivan caught the heavy, sludge-like signature of a Slime in a ravine and steered them wide around it. Rys moved with annoying ease.

She didn't stomp nor did she trip. She flowed over the terrain while Ivan and Ren hacked their way through it. By midday, the mood had soured.

"We're going in circles," Rys announced. She stopped dead, hands on her hips.

"You aren't the best navigator, eh, Ivan?" Ivan stopped and sighed.

"We aren't going in circles." She raised an eyebrow.

"I recognize that tree. It has a burl that looks like a wart. We passed it an hour ago."

"Trees look like trees, Rys. We're bearing east."

"East?" Her ears flattened. She pointed straight up at the sun filtering through the leaves.

"The coast is South, darling. Port Vallow is South. Unless you're planning to swim across the ocean, we are walking the wrong way."

"We're taking a detour."

"A detour." Her voice was flat.

"We are fugitives. Fugitives don't take scenic routes. Ivan, you aren't trying to sell me back to slavers, are you?" Ivan laughed.

"I think you can kill me right before I hand you over." Ivan reached into his inventory and pulled out the map. It was a crumpled, stained piece of parchment he'd found in one of the slavers' dead bodies. It wasn't a standard map that showed roads or towns. It showed ley lines and mana convergences. He unrolled it against a tree trunk. Rys leaned in, squinting.

"This is gibberish," she declared.

"Where are the roads?"

"Roads are where people are. We don't want people." Ivan tapped a spot near the edge of the parchment marked with a jagged rune.

"We're going here." Rys stared at the spot. Then at the vast, green hell awaiting them. Then back at Ivan.

"That is the Clattering Ridge," she said, her voice dripping with skepticism.

"There is nothing there but rocks, wind, and things that eat goats."

"And a nesting ground." Rys went still.

"A what?"

"I need materials," Ivan said, rolling the map back up.

"My ink supplies are garbage. Low-grade soot and water. If I want to write anything stronger than Level 20 spells without burning through my mana pool in seconds, I need conductive ink. I need reagents." He lied.

"So we're going shopping?"

"Harvesting." Rys looked at him. Really looked at him. The playfulness vanished, replaced by the cold assessment of a predator looking at prey that might be rabid.

"You aren't just taking a detour. You're hunting." Ivan kept a straight face and then sighed.

"You got me."

"Really, mister?" she scowled.

"We ran from that bear, remember? Why are we suddenly pretending to be hunters? While the Iron Chain Consortium is tracking us."

"Yes."

"Ivan." She stepped closer. She was tall, looming over Ren, almost eye-level with Ivan.

"I am not dying because you want to play alchemist. Put the map away. We are going to the coast."

"Listen, we won't make it to the coast with my current arsenal," Ivan countered calmly.

"The slavers we faced were the clean-up crew. Level 40s. The next wave? They'll send Hunters. Level 80s with specialized trackers. If they catch us and I'm still scratching basic glyphs in the dirt, we die. I need to grow stronger." Rys opened her mouth to argue. Then she snapped it shut as her ears swiveled forward.

"Quiet," she hissed. Ren froze mid-step. Ivan cut his sentence off and activated his [Mana Sense] as the air pressure dropped low. The birds, which had been annoying Ivan all morning, suddenly went mute. A shadow swept over the canopy. It wasn't a cloud. It was too fast, too solid. Ivan looked up through a gap in the leaves. High above, silhouetted against the bright sky, a shape circled on scaled, bat-like wings. A long tail trailed behind it, ending in a barb as it rode the thermal currents.

[Wyvern, Level 57] The mana signature was blinding. A core of burning, acidic green energy in its chest, radiating out through its veins. Ren whined, a high, thin sound in his throat. Rys grabbed the boy's shoulder and shoved him down into the brush, crouching low herself. Her claws slid out. The Wyvern circled once more. It screeched in a sound like tearing metal that vibrated in Ivan's teeth and then banked east, flying toward the rocky peaks of the ridge. Toward the spot on Ivan's map.

The birds did not start singing again. Ivan let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. He watched the Wyvern disappear over the tree line.

"Well," he said.

"That saves us some tracking time." Rys turned her head slowly to look at him. If looks could flay skin from bone, Ivan would have been a skeleton.

"No," she said.

"It's a male. Solitary. You can tell by the tail barb."

"No. Absolutely not! I thought you had a level head on your shoulders…"

"Level 57, it gained two levels in the last couple days. But still inside our range if we're smart," he said.

"Aren't you Level 55? We'll be fine."

"Ivan, are you brain-damaged?" Rys hissed, keeping her voice low but furious.

"That is a Wyvern, not a little Foxkin like me! It breathes acid and it flies. It eats things like the Dreadbear for breakfast. We are two fugitives and a child who ran from the said Dreadbear!"

"I need its blood," Ivan lied, ignoring her panic because the math was already running in his head. Well it wasn't totally a lie. Wyvern blood was highly conductive. Acidic, yes, but if stabilized... it would increase his glyph efficiency by 40%. Maybe 50%. Although that wouldn't help the scribbling he did on the air, but for usual scribe-work on paper, it'd help.

"And the acid gland. If I can mix that with charcoal..." Rys wasn't listening to him anymore, she was clasping her hands and praying.

"O' dear Kitsune, this stupid human is listing ingredients," Rys whispered to the gods or maybe just herself.

"He's looking at a flying death lizard and listing ingredients."

"Hey, I've fought it before and survived," Ivan exaggerated the event. Well, he'd faced another Wyvern before. He had helped a Gold-rank party engage one during a Guild raid three years ago. Mostly he had sat in the back writing suppression scrolls while the Vanguard got melted, but he had seen the mechanics. He knew the flight patterns. Rys grabbed him by the front of his tunic and yanked him down to her level. Her nose was inches from his. Her pupils were vertical slits.

"You are a Level 20 Scribe," she growled.

"I am a Level 55 Spirit Dancer with no weapons and mana exhaustion. We cannot kill a Wyvern."

"Your personality changes faster than a politician's words. Did anyone tell you that? And you're right, we can't kill it. Not in a fair fight," Ivan agreed. He didn't blink.

"So we just don't fight fair. We cheat." Rys stared at him. She was searching for the fear. The hesitation. Ivan gave her none. The math had already done its dirty work. The risk was stupid, and it still looked acceptable. She let go of his tunic with a shove.

"You're crazy," she decided.

"Not long ago, I decided to stop playing it safe. It's good to be crazy." Ivan smoothed his shirt.

"Anyway. It nests on the ridge. It comes out to hunt at dusk. That gives us four hours to prepare the kill zone."

"Kill zone," Ren squeaked from the bushes.

"We're really going to fight it?"

"We aren't," Ivan looked at the boy.

"You're going to hide in a very deep hole. She is going to be the bait." Rys laughed. It was a bark of pure incredulity.

"I am going to be the what?"