Chương 72: Stupid Show-offs

When she went to find a place to sleep that night, Pakos met her with Mole trotting behind him, who he had untethered from where he had been with the other steeds. Leading her over to the base of the roots again, Mole curled up first as Pakos nudged Squirt until she curled up against the deer steed's side. Pakos then laid out over her other side, wrapping her tightly in his fur and sandwiching her between the two beasts.

With a fresh rain, the summer night was rather cool, and the extra warmth of being sandwiched between the two had Squirt's eyelids drooping in seconds. Before her eyes closed, she saw a flicker in the shadow and felt the smoothness of a tendril as it wrapped around her wrist. Her brow furrowed softly as she stared at it. It made no other moves, just wrapped her wrist in a gentle hold. She scowled but allowed it for reasons she didn't care to examine further. She needed rest.

Tomorrow they would be leaving, moving towards the next treebed, and she needed her energy. Instead, she closed her eyes, letting herself drift off. It wasn't until the moment before she fell asleep that the panic hit, and she hated it. Damnit. The man had even been gentle with her. She'd had far more traumatic things happen in her life. It was just that this one had happened when she was supposed to be safe. When she thought herself stronger and more capable.

"Got room for one more?" came Qzi's voice. He leaned against Pakos's other side, part of the pile but not touching Squirt. Her heartbeat was still going too fast. Gods. This was annoying. Every time she got close to falling asleep, her heart would race and she'd wake again. And fucking Qzi absolutely knew. There was no way he couldn't. Redcaps had blood magic. He wasn't the most powerful redcap she'd ever been around, but he had more than enough to sense something like a heartbeat from this close.

Even Zhadin would know, their tendril wrapped around a pulse point like it was. She continued in this pattern for some time before she finally tired enough for the barriers to start to slip. Noticing her struggle, Qzi pulled out a knife, intending to stab the first person who came within range, orders be damned, if it would help. Instead, he ended up sharpening it to just have something to do with his hands. The sound brought her some comfort she was too tired to do more than grumpily acknowledge.

Shifting, she wrapped her hand around the shadow tendril, using it to tether herself to the sense of safety. Zhadin responded by wrapping additional tendrils around her ankles and other wrist. To both of their surprise, she leaned into the tendrils, unwilling to examine any further reasons for why. She needed sleep, and she didn't care how it happened anymore. The next night saw them in the same configuration deeper in the Wylds, having started heading to the next treebed.

Zakam, Jul, and Cirn took turns keeping watch while Anvanil spelled their small group into a barrier to alert them of foreign magic being performed. Squirt was vaguely aware of this but took care to never mention it, because like hell she'd admit how it warmed her heart when she hated it so gods damn much. She used the only tactic she knew—avoidance. If she never acknowledged it, it didn't exist. It was fine.

Totally fine that she went to sleep wrapped up in the tentacles of a damn shadowfell while a redcap sharpened every knife he owned. Absolutely fine that she hadn't had a night terror since. She was a grown damn fey, and she didn't suffer from night terrors. Nope. Instead, she focused on the job during the day of leading them through the Wylds to the treebeds. To her annoyance, none of the local hunters knew how to get to the treebeds.

Like most of the hunters she had met in Riverlands, they didn't stay out overnight, and thus simply patrolled the borders and returned in time to sleep in their own beds. For a small village Guard member, she knew more about the Wylds than the full-time hunters. The only ones that could keep up with her that hadn't"mysteriously" disappeared were the Chief Huntress, Lobelia, and the weird crazy one who had been chewing on her fist. The rest were good, but not good enough.

She didn't stray far from the main group, instead darting in and out of the woods on the back of her smaller, nimbler steed, directing the hunters she had brought with her as needed. By the end of the first day, the local hunters had paired themselves off with hers, most of them choosing Jul and teasing him over his shitty stealth techniques. She supposed it made them feel better when they made their own mistakes to use him as a scapegoat.

He laughed along with them, giving as good as he got and generally enjoying the camaraderie with the local hunters. Squirt didn't get the same treatment, naturally. It was like they were waiting for her to burst with divine light or be incredible like the apparent stories they'd heard of a miracle worker. Instead, they were presented with someone who was a skilled hunter and nothing more, leaving them confused, particularly with the protective and powerful nature of those around her.

Who were, in their eyes, all taking orders from a greenling pixie who refused to fly. A couple of them tried asking Jul in the quieter moments, but they only succeeded in annoying the fata and found themselves courting heatstroke as they traveled. The rest kept their mouths shut.

The only hunters who didn't keep their distance were Lobelia, who Squirt caught occasionally glaring at her and muttering curses under her breath, and the elven woman who had been psychotically chewing on her own fist during her introduction. Squirt eventually learned the woman was named Korga when she moved her own steed uncomfortably close to Squirt in a move Squirt was fairly certain was calculated to piss off Qzi, just to introduce herself boldly and chatter like they were already the best of friends.

Korga may not have bothered keeping her distance from Squirt, but Squirt definitely kept her distance from Korga. As they marched onward, they cleared out another treebed, then another in quick succession, the two within a mile of each other. For the most part, the hunters and soldiers were self-sufficient, and Squirt left them to their own devices.

That first treebed had been enough of a lesson to get them started, and Lobelia in particular seemed determined to master the skill while glaring at Squirt as if daring her to correct her technique. The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. Since Squirt both valued her life and the woman was terrifying on a good day, she kept her distance and instead conducted her own investigations and observations of the treebed.

She was careful to never admit to a dungeon discovery, though each treebed had one, leaving that as something for the soldiers to work out for themselves. Unlike Everwinter, there were no proclamations of having found the dungeons, leading Squirt to assume that Lord Norland had already claimed them. Every single treebed also demonstrated that the beasts had far more social lives than she had ever thought before. Nests of cohabitating beasts of all kinds and levels seeming to call some kind of truce together.

It gave her hope—maybe they wouldn't turn into a natural disaster by devouring each other. She should have known it was stupid to hope. The day had been going so well. Just before Lord Prince Ranin and Lord Norland called the company to halt for a brief lunch, Squirt reached into her bag, stringing a bow using the saddle handles, and launched a whistling signal to call back the scouts as she signaled a surge. Lord Prince Ranin didn't hesitate as he called for battle formations.

Lord Norland was a beat behind, calling out the command to split into five groups equidistant from each other, a task they had been practicing prior to this trip. Their efforts were obvious, and Squirt raced on Mole to drop the staffs in each circle as the ground began to shake. Trees were knocked over in distant booms that had the soldiers beginning to sweat.

Galloping to the third circle, Squirt suddenly stood in the stirrups, pulling a crafted arrow from a whale-wolf tail out of her pouch, stringing it, and loosing the arrow. It sailed with a whistle that drew the attention of the others before it sliced right through the neck of the fifty-foot Purple Wyrm that had been about to chow down on one of the hunters in the third group. Pitching her voice, she barked out, "Thin tentacles poisoned!" just before the body warped and fell as a feystone.

With a yip, Pakos scooped it up with his mouth and brought it into the circle just as Squirt made it inside. Mole was breathing heavily while Squirt jammed the staff into the ground, lining it up and snapping out, "Eyes forward—shadow whale-wolves. Smart, climbers, slicing tails." Those that had turned to glance at her snapped their attention back out at the beasts surrounded by clouds of shadow racing towards them.

Tapping her heels, Mole raced away from the on-coming surge and to the next group when wisp snakes popped up, the idiots in the circle on the other side using their swords to cut them and doubling the problem. One fey was soon overrun, endangering the entire circle as he fell back, the wisp snakes engulfing him and breaking through their shield line. Cursing, Squirt smashed the staff into the ground, shouted, "Face it to the center!" and kicked Mole towards the coming horde of wisp snakes.

Grabbing out a vine of lantern peppers from her bag and swinging it like a flail, she bashed away the snakes and shouted, "Squish, don't cut!" Dropping down by the fey who was covered, she smashed the pepper on him, spraying a bit of the pepper juice as she did so. The snakes hissed and shriveled at the touch of the capsaicin on their delicate skin before bursting into smoke.

"What the—where—""One creature, many parts!" Squirt shouted.

"Mole, stay!" Mole didn't like the order but obeyed. Squirt ducked between two other fey Guard members holding the line, spinning the pepper plant threateningly as she darted across to the last group. The ground rumbled under her feet, something deep enough and powerful enough to almost topple her entirely. In the distance, she thought she might have heard a boom and a thousand cracks all at once but then the ground cracked beneath her feet.

Dropping the pepper, she leapt up into the air, pushing off the earth drake's horn as it tried to swallow her whole. Twisting midair, she grabbed out a larger shot of blazing ant powder and hurled it right into the creature's open mouth. It snapped down on it on instinct, and Squirt didn't stay to see it die horribly. Instead, she tumbled into a roll off the creature's flank, using it to push herself farther away from it and towards the last group when a pack of shadow whale-wolves surrounded her.

She froze, her eyes focused as they flittered between the whale-wolves. They didn't jump at her—not immediately. Instead, a couple kept their eyes on her while the others turned their attention on the surrounding fey. Squirt blinked, an epiphany hitting her in the middle of battle. Going off on that, she grabbed out the short sword, turning it on the creature in front of her and— And it turned to solid ice. As did the rest of them.

Squirt glared at Lady Cirn, putting her sword away and finishing the sprint to put the last staff in place, miffed that her glory had been stolen so easily. That was a life-or-death battle for her, and Lady Cirn had practically just waved her hand at the same problem to solve it. Damnit.

With the last staff in place, the lord enacted the ritual, and the other soldiers breathed out a sigh of relief. Cirn sheathed her sword, nodding at the huntress to reassure her that she was safe, only to be met with a death glare from the pixie. Not understanding what she had done wrong and being too otherwise awkward to ask, Cirn shifted to stand at attention and await reprimand.

The huntress exhaled sharply out her nose before turning and stalking towards some of the creatures that had thrown themselves inside the bubble of safety, beginning to skin them. Hidden safely behind her veil, Cirn managed to hide her gushing over the cuteness of the tiny woman and her flush of satisfaction at having finally protected her like she was supposed to. No. Cirn was a fierce and powerful warrior. She did not gush over cute things.

She'd worked too hard and sacrificed too much to earn her moniker and the feared respect over her skills as a fighter to lose it all just to gush over the tiny, adorable, powerful warrior woman. Besides, she was more than familiar with the struggle of separating oneself from one's features, and she refused to reduce Athereon to her cuteness.

Instead, as always, she enjoyed it in the privacy of her veil before subtly taking up position to guard the woman, taking the opportunity to admire her knife technique from as close as she dared to be without disturbing her. The Chief Huntress of Norland, Lobelia, a curly-haired redhead with dark brown eyes and three wicked scars across her face, passed by muttering, "You all act like she shits rainbows." Cirn's brow twitched, and she glared at the other woman.

Unconcerned, Lobelia went about barking orders at her own hunters and correcting their technique, having quickly mastered the skills that Squirt had taught. Cirn had to take a few steadying breaths, keeping her calm and preventing the woman's animosity from getting to her. She was no danger to the huntress, of that much Cirn felt certain, no matter how many glares the woman leveled at her charge. The ice that had begun to overtake her gloves melted away again as she returned her attention to Athereon.

She was blatantly ignoring everyone else, closely examining every specimen before removing the important traits.

"Hey, Huntress, um…" the orc hunter who had called out at Athereon turned to one of the other hunters with a confused furrow to his brow as he whispered, "Wait, do we call her Huntress Athereon, or…?" Athereon stood from where she'd been examining a fiend hound's teeth and trotted over with a wary glare. Only once she had scanned every face near the orc's small group did she address him directly with a blunt, "Most people end up assigning a name to me. I don't care what you call me. Huntress works just fine."

"Right but…" the guy rubbed the back of his head awkwardly. Athereon huffed, and Cirn had to bite her lip to keep her eyes from glittering at the sight.

"… Mystva or Squirt work just as well." One of the other hunters, a pixie with a dash of green in his otherwise blue eyes, said, "Ah, Squirt must be your greenling name." She gave him a considering look while Cirn puzzled over the concept of a greenling name. The pixie shrugged and said something that Cirn knew was Common. She did. It had to be. Only, bizarrely, she couldn't understand a word of it. Judging by the confused faces of those around her, she wasn't the only one, either.

Athereon grunted, said something back in a cutting tone before turning back to the orc with an angry, expectant expression. He jolted.

"Oh, right." Then pointed down at the pile of wisp snakes.

"These nearly killed Jerald, right? What are they?" Cirn continued to watch as Athereon took over as teacher, much to the annoyance and irritation of Lobelia. The Norland hunters responded to her teachings by finally relaxing around the tiny woman as she taught them about the beasts of their forests.