Chương 131: Chapter 104: The Charming Dunmere Send-Off

Lysa stopped me beside the beastbone kitchen before dawn and pressed a warm parcel into my hands. Browned fat had already begun soaking through one corner of the cloth, carrying bitterroot and the cleaner smell of frost-deer meat.

"The best cut from the largest deer," she said when I opened my mouth.

"That should go to the wounded."

"They ate yesterday because you built the kitchen. You fed everyone else. This one is yours." She pushed the parcel back when I tried to return it.

"Talia may steal whatever portion you fail to defend." Talia stood near the southern road tightening the straps across her coat. The repaired Woodsman's Axe rested over my shoulder, while the Cinderline Falchion remained sheathed across my back and locked behind a Bronze Combat requirement I had failed to reach during the journey home.

The blade had cost enough to repair several roofs, but until one of my combat abilities advanced, it remained expensive weight travelling towards the creature it had been purchased to kill. Jory stepped away from the people gathered around the kitchen. One of my old wooden birds hung beneath his coat cord, its thicker wing rubbed smooth by handling. He carried another carving in one hand. The new bird was smaller, cut from ordinary pale wood and drilled through the back for tendon cord.

Its body was too square and the beak had been recut after the first attempt, but it copied the shape closely enough that I recognised what the maker intended.

"Fen made it," Jory said.

"He said you ought to carry one that belongs to Dunmere."

"I already carry a bird." Jory looked towards the hidden weight beneath my shirt.

"That one has never looked lucky." The Heartwood Bird warmed faintly, although the morning air remained cold.

"The old charms worked for us," Jory continued.

"We were still here when you came back." The town behind him had lost most of the western palisade, half its roofs, three guards beneath the Cataract, and enough beds that families slept inside stores and work rooms. The southern line existed only where Talvek placed people across the road. Yet Jory stood there holding proof that survival could be interpreted more generously than the evidence deserved. I accepted the charm and tied it around my wrist.

It rested beside the ring finger that still ached whenever the Heartwood Bird reacted. Only then did I notice how many of the earlier carvings remained. Edda wore one around her wrist, blackened by grease from the kitchen. Pell had fastened his beneath the cord securing his ink case. Fen's hung from the haft of a bone spear, while two more had been fixed above Bellan's healer-room entrance. Talvek's was almost hidden beneath the upper edge of his breastplate.

Lysa wore none openly, but a familiar wooden point pressed against the cloth of her pocket when she folded her arms. I had carved the birds from scraps after more useful work. They carried no rank, effect, or proper craft worth recording. Most had uneven wings and marks too shallow to survive weather. I had expected them to vanish beneath beds, pass between children, or enter a fire when sentiment became less useful than fuel. Dunmere had kept them while losing walls.

No one stopped working long enough to turn the departure into ceremony. The kitchen fires remained lit, Mörk continued moving ironwood towards the Cataract, and Pell kept the morning tally open against his chest. They watched because the demon had searched their houses for something linked to me, and Talia and I intended to follow it before the route turned back towards town. Lysa nodded towards my wrist.

"Bring back whatever proves it cannot return."

"The whole body?"

"Whatever portion makes Wade stop proposing another pursuit with wounded guards." Talia joined me at the road. Her gaze passed over the visible charms and slowed when she noticed Talvek's beneath his armour. He met her eyes once. She adjusted the knife at her hip, while he straightened despite the stiffness in his shoulder. Neither gave the exchange enough movement for anyone else to claim it. We left carrying cooked meat, two wooden birds, one locked Bronze blade, and more expectation than Dunmere could replace.

Halden had traced the demon's route beyond the Cataract collapse into an abandoned flood channel. The passage emerged south of the ruins beneath a bank of broken stone, where black residue clung to the opening in narrow lines too dense to be ordinary blood. Veinfinder found the disturbance before my eyes did. Stone around the exit had softened beneath the demon's hands, then hardened with its grain altered.

Beneath that damage lay dried blood from Wade's guards, old ore, river moisture, and a warmer pressure that had passed through each without belonging to them. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. The trail continued south. Talia followed visible damage while I read what the ground retained. The demon crossed a burned field, entered a stand of thin blackpine, then turned around a ridge instead of climbing it.

Its forelimbs had sunk more deeply than the rear wherever prints survived, suggesting a body shaped to pull, open, and carry rather than run.

"What did your book call it?" I asked.

"Several things, none precise enough to trust."

"You knew it was hunting inherited fire."

"I suspected."

"You knew the Heartwood Bird might contain it."

"I suspected that too."

"Your suspicions contain more facts than most explanations." She stopped beside an ash-filled ditch and faced me.

"Ask the question you have been carrying since Dunmere." The rough charm pressed against my wrist as I crouched beneath a collapsed fence rail. The Heartwood Bird remained quiet, but the left ring finger had begun pulsing again.

"Why did you follow me?" I asked.

"To keep you alive."

"That is why you stayed." Her face tightened because the distinction had found its mark.

"At first, I wanted to understand why your abilities did not fit your recorded race. Then I wanted to know why a Crimson Elf had constructed a ritual around you. After Araluen, I wanted to know why a restricted family text described what your blood was beginning to do."

"And now?"

"Now I know enough to understand why other people would cut you apart for better answers." A narrow line of dried blood ran beneath the fence rail, protected from rain by the fallen timber. Veinfinder recognised the Iron within it, but the pressure was too organised to feel like a mineral trace. It had carried warmth, life, and movement through a structure before being spilled. Veins were not defined by stone. They were defined by flow. I extended Veinfinder beyond the visible smear.

The trail continued in drops too small to see, each retaining a faint relationship with the body that had lost it. Dark channels had carried mineral pressure inside living tissue, and the residue followed those channels even after leaving them. Talia crouched opposite me.

"What have you found?"

"A vein."

"Inside the ground?"

"Inside what crossed it." Her attention moved towards the trees.

"Can you follow it?"

"Yes." We continued through the burned farms, where ash preserved every disruption the rain had not flattened. Black-red residue marked places where the demon's plates had opened. Mineral dust clung to stone struck by its limbs, while heat remained in the roots it crossed, making the sap channels brighter beneath Veinfinder. The sense began revealing living pathways I had previously understood only through Beastcraft. Roots divided like ore seams. Sap moved through timber as blood moved through flesh.

When I looked towards Talia, warmth travelled beneath her skin in ordered lines that tightened as she noticed my attention.

"Stop doing that," she said.

"Nothing is visible."

"That makes it worse." I narrowed the ability back towards the trail.

"You said the book described hunters like this."

"Bloodline hunters used during the inheritance wars. Some were bred. Some were summoned. Some were assembled from animals and material the writers declined to classify."

"What did they hunt?"

"Elemental inheritance concentrated inside blood, organs, relics, or living cores. The language changes because the authors disagreed over whether those were separate things."

"And Dragonkin?" Talia watched the trees rather than me.

"Dragonkin inheritance was considered persistent. It could disappear for generations, then reassert itself under rank pressure, ritual exposure, or contact with a compatible relic."

"You knew that when you saw the veins."

"I knew it was possible."

"You also knew before telling me."

"Yes." The answer came without defence, which made it harder to dismiss than another polished evasion.

"My family owns the copy of On Inherited Fire because one of my ancestors helped suppress the bloodlines it records," she continued.

"I took it before leaving Araluen. Possession is restricted, and I was not certain whether you were evidence, survivor, weapon, or mistake."

"And now?" Talia looked at the rough bird tied around my wrist.

"I began by wanting to know what you were. I stayed because I learned who you were. The first motive does not disappear because the second became more important." It was enough truth to hurt without becoming reassurance. That made it easier to believe. We ate Lysa's parcel beneath the remains of a sheep shed. The frost-deer had been cooked with boar fat, bitterroot, and more salt than most kitchen portions received. The meat separated without a knife and tasted excessive while Dunmere rationed broth.

Talia took half after threatening to take more. When one final piece remained, she pushed it towards me.

"You need it."

"You are the Bronze fighter."

"You are carrying the unusable Bronze sword."

"That does not make me stronger."

"No. It makes you heavier." I ate the final piece because leaving it would have insulted everyone who had chosen not to. The trail sharpened beyond the farms. Beneath leaning birch trees, we found a frost-boar opened from throat to lower chest. No meat had been taken. The heart was missing, and black-red residue coated the vessels nearest the empty cavity. I placed one hand against the exposed ribs. Veinfinder entered the body.

The boar's veins spread through the sense as pathways defined by what had moved through them and what had been removed. Ranked pressure gathered around the heart cavity, then vanished into the alien residue. A second circulation had entered the carcass, narrower and hotter, extending part of the demon into the wound to test what the animal carried. The demon's trail left the boar through blood too faint for sight.

It travelled south for several hundred paces, crossed a shallow stream, then curved west around the ridge. After that, it turned north. Towards us. I pulled my hand away. Talia had already drawn her blade.

"How recent?" she asked. The boar remained warm beneath the hide. The residue inside it had not yet cooled.

"Recent enough that it knows we followed." Talia watched the birch trunks behind us.

"It was feeding."

"It left the meat." I looked at the emptied vessels and the careful way its circulation had entered them.

"It was checking."

"For what?" The Heartwood Bird heated against my chest. Something beyond the trees answered with a pulse strong enough to make Fen's carved charm strike once against my wrist.

"A heart worth taking."