Chương 84: Chapter 82: The Ascent.

The expedition assembled just after dawn. There were no speeches. Count Vance rode the line once, checking straps and provisions, and that was the extent of ceremony. There were nerves in the air. Men and women who walked too stiffly, who gazed up at the mountain for only a moment before gazing away. I adjusted the bracer on my arm. Beside me, Violet was doing some stretches, bending forward so far her arms reached her toes. She had been doing a series of them since we'd all gathered.

Did she expect us to get into a fight the instant we set off? No, knowing her, perhaps she meant to start one herself. Damian stood a few paces off. He was checking his sword belt for the third time. He hadn't looked at me yet this morning. Sere had wandered over to Dorothy, who was crouched near a supply crate, fumbling with the straps on her pack. Sere watched her with what I could only describe as studious interest. Dorothy noticed and flinched. She then offered Sere a piece of chocolate from her coat pocket.

Sere accepted. The transaction seemed to satisfy both parties.

"Ready, My Lady?" Count Vance had brought his horse alongside me. He wouldn't ride it up the mountain. The animals would stay with two men at the base. This was just for appearance sake.

"As ready as I'll ever be I suspect." He nodded once, turned to the column, and raised his hand. There was a scream. It came from above us. I had read about animal roars in bestiaries and heroic tales. Challenges to whoever would dare face something that thought itself invincible. This sounded more like a pained wail -a long keening so loud I almost expected it to cause an avalanche. It was the dragon. What else could it have been? Every person in the column froze. Hands went to weapons. Eyes went to the sky.

Nobody moved. Even Violet froze mid-stretch. Eira. Vaelin whispered. With the whisper came a pull. My right hand jerked toward my hip before I caught it with my left, pressing both against my thigh. With the pull, came sadness. Sadness, and recognition. I swallowed hard and buried the sensation as deep as I could manage. I had suspected and known already. This changed nothing. Count Vance's hand was still raised. It had not wavered.

He held it there for three more seconds, letting the silence stretch, letting every man and woman find their nerve again. Then he brought it down.

"Move out." The column lurched forward. Nobody spoke again for some time. The lower slopes were deceptively gentle. A winding path had been carved into the rock, moving up the mountainside in a pattern I vaguely remembered from a map I'd seen when I'd approved of this plan. It was partially maintained -the villagers had kept the worst of it passable, at least as far as the entrance of the mine itself. Beyond that, the path narrowed and crumbled in places where no one had bothered to repair it for years.

The expedition moved in a tight column. The path didn't allow for much else. It allowed for three men at most, and in some stretches, two. I found myself scanning back as we walked. I was looking for one man in particular. I found him easily enough. Morone. The scout was at the very back of the column, his hands bound by cuffs that kept him from channeling mana. He was Greenward's observer.

Count Vance had thought it safest to bring him with us -safer than having the villagers look after him, or worse, have to spare a fighting man to guard him. The assassin himself had died, just as I'd guessed he would. I had not told Sere, though she might not have cared. The Chief had come to the base to see us off, though "see us off" was perhaps too generous a description. She had stood with her arms folded and watched us file past with a blank expression. As I'd passed her, she'd said one thing.

"Come back." There was no warmth there. I'd nodded. It had felt like enough. Sere had drifted from my side. Violet had filled that space as if it was only natural. Sere walked next to Dorothy, who was just behind me. Sere gazed left and right, taking in the mountain with wide, bright eyes. Every few minutes she would stop, pull out her notepad, and sketch something. She was, perhaps, the only one having the time of their lives. Sere was not a fool -she was sharp and she knew the danger.

She knew the grim task we were heading towards. She simply didn't seem to think the danger was a reason to stop looking at things. I envied that. More than I wanted to admit. We had been climbing for a little over three hours when something in the air changed. It wasn't just that it was colder now -we had been freezing since we'd arrived at Iron Hollow, and the cold on the mountain was merely a deeper shade of the same misery. Instead, it felt heavier and denser.

Each breath required a fraction more effort than the last. It almost felt like someone was leaking mana into the air. I compressed mana into my lungs and chest but even that felt… sluggish. None of the expeditioners said anything, though they all cast wary glances around them. The Chief had said that all of the monsters had fled the mountain. She could have been wrong. It certainly felt like the kind of place where one would get attacked. Eira. Eira. Vaelin murmured.

The name came again and again, layered with grief. The Godblade was mourning. You can still tell me, Vaelin. The Godblade seemed to retreat in my mind. A word came as it did. Vyranthos. It didn't surprise me. Not after what I knew and suspected already. I caught myself humming. Humming a low sound that had crept up my throat without my permission. I didn't recognize the melody. I stopped -pressed my lips together. The urge to continue the tune sat in my chest. This was new. Vaelin wanted to use my body to… sing?

So many questions, and not enough answers. The path narrowed further. The wind picked up. On the Everfrost Plain, the gusts had been random. Sometimes from directions that didn't even make sense. Here, it was a steady force pressing down the mountain. It was constant and relentless. Nobody had mentioned anything like this. It only made our uneasy procession more wary.

"Really does feel like an adventure." Violet breathed, the words coming out in a puff of white.

"That's all you're thinking of?"

"Hell yeah. What else is there to think about?" I smiled, reached over and lightly swatted her side. Behind me, Dorothy stumbled. The Wastes were already hard enough on her. Perhaps bringing her up here was simply asking too much of her. Her replacement escort -a broad shouldered adventurer named Gild- steadied her with one hand while he carried the Scrylens with the other. Physical enhancement Gifts really were useful.

"I'm fine," Dorothy gasped. She was not fine. Her face was grey. I slowed and considered sending her back. We had the Scrylens. It wasn't the most complicated device to operate. Technically, she didn't have to be here.

"Dorothy. There's no shame in-""I'm documenting this." Her voice came out in a thin rasp, but her eyes were sharp as they met mine.

"I-I need to. I'm not going back." Before I could answer, Sere reached into the woman's pack, rummaged briefly, and produced a canteen. She held it out with both hands, looking up at Dorothy expectantly. Dorothy blinked, took it and drank. Some color returned to her face. The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Sere patted her arm once, nodded in satisfaction, and walked to the side to examine a patch of ice crystals growing along the rock face.

She pulled out her notepad and began to draw.

"Thank you," Dorothy murmured after her. Sere didn't turn around. I let Dorothy stay. It was, perhaps, not the wisest decision. It was also the one I knew I'd have always made. The path eventually forced single-file movement along a ridge. To the left, the mountain rose in a sheer wall of stone. To the right, the slope fell away into a white abyss. This was far past the mine, which was as far up as most villagers ever went. The path between was barely wide enough for one person.

The column's order put me directly behind Damian. He had been ahead of us since the start. The single-file formation had simply compressed us together, and by the time I noticed, it was too late to rearrange without making it obvious. Why had the thought even come to me? I studied his back as we walked. His steps were sure and confident. He was faintly using mana. That much I could feel. Was he checking the stone? That would make sense. It would also be clever.

He was more confident than most of the expeditioners I saw. The ones who weren't had appropriate Gifts for something like this. Click. I turned the nausea down and hesitated as my mental fingers reached for the fear. Don't suppose you'll let me turn this down too? I asked Vaelin. A thrum came a second later. By now, I knew what it meant. It was a no. Lovely. A section of the path crumbled without warning. The edge simply gave way. A chunk of rock the size of a man's torso tumbled silently into the white below.

Damian reacted before the debris had fully separated. His hand slammed flat against the wall, and the stone beneath our feet groaned. New rock pushed outward from the mountainside, filling the gap, making a ledge before anyone could so much as stumble. He turned to check behind him and our eyes met. They met for a second longer than they needed to. Something moved behind his expression. He nodded, turned back and kept walking. Occasionally I would look behind me.

At Violet who was now two behind in the procession, and strolled as if this was my Manor's grounds. At Sere behind her, who seemed more preoccupied gazing down at the abyss than she did walking forward. I knew they'd be fine, but the fear remained. We continued in silence for a time. I listened to the wind and the crunch of Damian's boots ahead of me, and tried not to think about how different that sound was from the last time we had walked together.

"The rock here is fractured," I said.

"Can you tell how deep it goes?" Damian's hand touched the wall again. I felt a longer pulse of mana this time.

"Very deep," he said.

"The mountain's been under stress for a long time." He paused.

"Water, probably. Freezing and unfreezing over and over again."

"Same as the village walls."

"Yeah." How accurate, and how professional. Even this small exchange stung. My boot caught on a loose stone. My weight shifted Damian's hand shot out and caught my arm. His fingers closed around my forearm and held. I felt his grip tighten, then release.

"Careful," he said. He turned and kept walking. I wanted to say something. Anything -something that could build a bridge over the space between us. I'm sorry you saw what I am. Except I wasn't sorry. Perhaps that was the problem. That I would do it again. if I needed to. Had I needed to, I would have done worse. I think Damian knew that, because Damian was not stupid, and because he had sworn himself to me with his eyes open. The question was whether his eyes had been open enough. I watched him walk ahead of me.

Awkwardness aside, he was still here -still coming with me on this venture. That made it sting more. We were now higher still, and had been marching for the better part of the day. The path widened into a broad shelf of flat rock, and Count Vance called a halt. The expeditioners dropped packs and leaned against stones, doubtless grateful for the respite. Even the veterans looked worn. It had been six hours of climbing, and the weight of the air had only grown worse.

Not for the first time, was I glad I had absurd mana reserves. I sat on a flat boulder at the shelf's edge and looked out over the expanse below. From here, Iron Hollow was barely a smudge. The Everfrost Plain stretched beyond it, endless white meeting the grey horizon. Somewhere past that, invisible from this height, the Ashen Wastes waited. And past those, the walls of Aelheim. The absence of everything made me uneasy.

The lower slopes of the mountain had been barren, but there had been something at least -lichens clinging to the rock, frozen scrub in sheltered crevices. The faintest hint that life had once tried here and not entirely given up. Here, there was nothing. The rock was scoured clean. Even the snow was thinner, dusting the ground in patches rather than covering it like the deep blanket below. I reached for my Gift and layered it over Mana Sight. Click. Click. What I saw made me go very still.

The ambient mana wasn't flowing. In every place I had ever been -in Aelheim, in the Ashen Wastes, on the Everfrost Plain- mana moved. It drifted and circled, like currents of air. Sometimes, I used mana sight just to watch them. Here, the mana was still. Perfectly and absolutely still. It pooled in the air and in the rock and in the snow, and it did not move. I felt Vaelin's pressure recede. For the first time since I had acquired it at the auction house, I could barely feel the Godblade at all.

A chill settled over me that had nothing to do with the cold. Perhaps the expeditioners felt some measure of what I had just seen. Men and women who had been whispering were silent. Count Vance met my eyes across the shelf. He was a man who had spent years in the Ashen Wastes, who had watched men die and burned their bodies and marched on the next morning. He had seen things that would break most people. I saw uncertainty in his face.

Was this what it was like to approach something that had a connection to the divine? Something holy, and broken. Perhaps it was entirely unrelated -I hoped for that. I said nothing. There was nothing to say that would not make it worse. Sere sat on the rock beside me. She had her notepad open, her pen moving in quick, light strokes. I glanced over at her drawing. It was the view from the shelf. A view of the plains, the distant smudge of the village, the endless white. She had captured it with a few dozen lines.

It was good. She looked up at me, turned the notepad so I could see it properly. Pretty? She had written the word in the corner, next to a small arrow pointing at the drawing. I looked at Sere's bright eyes and her flushed cheeks and the way she held the notepad out like a child showing a parent something they'd made. Which, I supposed, might not be too far off.

Around us, nearly fifty hardened men and women sat in the grip of something none of them could name and were as silent as if none of them had been there at all. A divine weapon had gone silent in my mind. And Sere wanted to know if I thought the view was pretty.

"Yes," I said. My throat was tight.

"It's very pretty." She beamed, tucked the notepad away, and hopped off the boulder to, I suspect, to go show Dorothy. I watched her go. Something in my chest loosened, just a fraction. Violet dropped down next to me a moment later. She didn't say anything at first. She just sat there, with her legs dangling off the boulder, staring out at the same view Sere had drawn.

"It's quiet," she said.

"It is."

"Not the good kind of quiet either." She knew about the good kinds of quiet?

"No." Violet leaned back on her hands. Her warhammer lay across her lap.

"They're spooked," she said, quietly enough that it wouldn't carry.

"Even the big ones. That grey-haired bastard near the front, Simone, I think? His hands are shaking. I saw him try to hide it when he thought nobody was looking." I hadn't noticed that.

"Are you spooked?" I asked.

"Nah." She said it quickly -far too quickly. Then she seemed to catch herself, tugged at her braid, and let out a breath.

"Maybe a little. This place feels wrong."

"It might be."

"Great. Thanks for that. You really know how to give pep talks." We sat in silence. The wind pressed down on us from above, steady and cold.

"Hey." Violet bumped my shoulder with hers. Not too hard.

"You've got that look again."

"What look?"

"The one where you're thinking something stupid." She didn't look at me as she said it. Her eyes stayed on the horizon.

"I'm here with you. You know that, right?" I opened my mouth and did not say anything.

"Sometimes you just have to hit the thing in front of you," Violet said.

"And the thing after that. And the thing after that, until there's nothing left to hit."

"That's your answer to everything."

"Because it works." She grinned, and it was smaller than usual, but it was real.

"You do the thinking. I'll do the hitting. I think that'll work out nicely." Violet bumped my shoulder again. This time, she stayed there for a second too long. Then, she moved away again.

"Guess our break's almost over. I'm going to go check on the rockhead." She meant Damian. I watched her go, warhammer swinging at her side. What had loosened had now unclenched. Count Vance gave the order to resume the climb. The silence that had settled over the shelf came with us. The path narrowed again as we rounded a broad shoulder of rock. The peak was above us now, hidden behind the curve of the mountain, but close. I could feel it. I could also feel something else.

I could not have said which of my senses let me feel the wrongness, but I did. It was perhaps something that went deeper than the senses. Vaelin remained silent. Its weight had returned but it had not spoken. He would not speak no matter how much I prodded. The path curved and the column slowed, bunching at the front as men stopped to navigate the bend one at a time. Then the front of the column stopped entirely. There was no order from Count Vance. No shout of warning. The men at the front simply stopped moving.

The halt rippled backward through the column, body by body, until the man in front of me stopped and I nearly walked into his back.

"What-" Violet started behind me. I pushed past the man ahead of me, moving forward along the narrow path. Men pressed themselves against the wall to let me through. Their faces were pale. I rounded the bend. The path ahead was black.