Chapter 14
Alsen woke up early. Intentionally so. He waited for Luna to drop down from the tree, which she did before anyone else woke up. She landed underneath the tree, rope, and sleeping bag in her hands.
He pulled himself out of his sleeping bag, waving a good morning.
She waved back and started wrapping up her sleeping bag. He walked to her, motioning away from the group.
They stopped behind a large tree.
“What’s up?” Luna asked, stifling a yawn.
“I need to talk to you about something.”
She narrowed her eyes. At the same time, she continued tying the sleeping bag. “About?”
“So, there’s a bet about when Sonja will manage to put a collar on you.”
She snorted, still working on the knot around her sleeping bag. “Oh, really?”
“The pool is a hundred gold, and I bet on today. If you were to let her succeed today, I’d split the gold twenty-eighty with you.”
She stopped tying. Her eyes met his, her gaze sparking mischief. “You think that’s worth only twenty gold?”
“Twenty for me. Eighty for you. Easy money, and it’s not like you don’t enjoy the games.”
She grunted. “Ten-ninety.”
Perfect. He would have done zero-hundred too, as the result interested him more than any gold. “Deal. Ten-ninety.”
Luna returned to her knot. “I’m not going to just let her put it on me.”
“That’s up to you. I’m in for the result, not the method.”
Luna pulled the knot tight, tested it, and slung the bag over her shoulder. “And you’ll owe me one.”
That wasn’t even a concession. “Sure.”
She walked away without another word.
He returned to his sleeping bag to lie on it for a bit more. More rest never hurt, and he did a breathing exercise with it too.
The others woke up within an hour, and they headed out shortly after breakfast. The terrain continued the pattern from yesterday, rocky slopes giving way to thicker woodland as they descended from the plateau.
The path narrowed to a game trail that Garrett navigated from memory, checking his map twice per hour.
Sonja, who looked like she barely slept, with bags under her eyes, but with a gaze filled with determination, produced the red collar within the first ten minutes of travel. “Kitten,” she announced, holding it up like a trophy. “Today’s the day.”
Luna glanced at the collar, then at Sonja, then quickened her pace to walk behind Theron.
Sonja followed.
Luna circled Theron, putting him between them.
Sonja went around the other way.
Luna ducked under Theron’s arm and emerged on his opposite side. Theron, to his credit, didn’t break stride. He simply kept walking, eyes forward, as two women used him as a mobile barricade.
Everyone kept walking, letting the games happen. Now that the bets were placed, any interference would invalidate the game.
By late morning, the game of tag had expanded to include the terrain itself.
Luna used rocks, trees, and switchbacks in the trail to stay precisely out of arm’s reach.
She never ran. She never looked hurried.
She simply wasn’t where Sonja expected her to be, moving through the group and the landscape with an effortlessness that betrayed perfect spatial awareness.
Sonja, for her part, was getting creative. She tried approaching from behind while Luna spoke with Marena. She tried a wide flanking maneuver through the underbrush. She tried sending Theron ahead to block the trail and close Luna’s retreat, but Theron refused on principle.
The midday stop came and went. They ate rock bear leftovers and refilled water from a stream. Luna sat next to Alsen, which put her in the open, but Sonja seemed to be too busy resting, anyway.
Chasing after Luna wasn’t a low-effort activity.
The afternoon pushed them into denser forest. The canopy thickened overhead, filtering the sunlight into pale columns that shifted with the wind. The trail wound between old-growth trunks, some thick enough that two men couldn’t link arms around them.
It was beautiful, so much so that it made Alsen stare. The contrast between places became unignorable. Everything in this world was either beautiful or terrible, and he pondered the ratio.
Sonja made her move an hour before camp.
They were navigating a stretch where the trail dropped between two mossy boulders, creating a short bottleneck. Garrett went through first, then Theron. Alsen followed. Marena squeezed through after him, apologizing for stepping on his heel.
Luna went last, slipping between the boulders with casual ease.
Sonja was waiting on the other side, the collar already unclasped in her hands.
Luna stopped. She saw Sonja. She looked left, where the terrain dropped into a gully straight behind the boulder. She looked right, where the boulder’s brothers blocked the path.
With a smirk, Luna walked straight at Sonja.
Sonja stepped in, snapping the collar around Luna’s throat. She ducked under it, slipping by her side. Luna’s shoe slipped on a loose rock, her balance breaking for a split second.
With an instant pivot, Sonja caught the collar around Luna’s neck. Luna regained her balance, but Sonja had already locked the collar. “There,” Sonja breathed. “That’s perfect. You’re perfect.”
“You must be out of your mind.” Luna slipped from her, continuing the walk.
Sonja didn’t push it. She formed the warmest smile Alsen had seen from her, and gently tucked a strand of Luna’s hair behind her ear before Luna got out of reach.
Then she walked ahead, taking point from Garrett without a word, and the group followed.
The shift was immediate.
When Garrett called for camp at a clearing beside a stream, Sonja set up the fire, then brought Luna the first serving of food without being asked.
She sat next to Luna, practically pressed against her.
She spoke more softly. Asked questions and waited for answers instead of filling the silence herself.
The rest of the group didn’t comment. Alsen waited patiently. The collar had to stay on until tomorrow for him to get paid.
The Sonja who spent two days chasing Luna across the hills had vanished. In her place was someone attentive, patient, almost protective. She refilled Luna’s water without asking. When the temperature dropped, she offered her own cloak and accepted the refusal without arguing.
Luna sat through all of it in silence. The collar was still on. She hadn’t touched it since Sonja clasped it. The red leather sat snug against her neck, the brass ring catching firelight.
Alsen couldn’t tell if Luna hated it or didn’t mind it. She gave him nothing to work with, which was probably an answer in itself.
After dinner, Theron was the first to approach. He dropped a small pouch of coins next to Alsen’s leg without ceremony. “Well played.”
“Thanks.”
Marena came next, pressing her coins into Alsen’s palm with a small, nervous smile. “I really didn’t think it would happen. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize for losing a bet.”
Garrett was last. He counted out his coins one by one, placing them in a neat stack. His eyes held a knowing glint. “Tomorrow, huh?”
“A lucky guess.”
“Mhm.” Garrett’s gaze shifted to Luna, who sat across the fire, then back to Alsen. “Lucky indeed.”
Alsen collected the gold. He would give Luna her share tomorrow morning.
Luna climbed her tree again that night. The collar stayed on.
Sonja stared up at the branches for a long time, a faint smile on her face, and then went to sleep on the ground below Luna’s tree.
The second day, Alsen caught Luna in the morning again, handing over the spoils of the bet. “It looks good on you,” he remarked.
“Don’t push it.” Luna tossed the gold into an invisible bag and went on to tie her sleeping bag.
The day brought rougher terrain.
The forest thinned as they climbed out of the valley and into the foothills proper. The trees got shorter, stubbier, bent by winds that came howling off the higher ridges. The path, what little remained of it, wound between outcroppings of pale stone and patches of scrub grass.
No signs of any civilization. No houses, no roads, not a single stone placed anywhere by human hands.
Garrett led them along a ridge that offered a view of the terrain ahead. Wooded hills rolled out toward a distant line of mountains, their peaks still capped with snow despite the season. Somewhere in those foothills, the dungeon waited.
“We’re making good time,” Garrett said. “If we push through today, we can be within sight of the entrance by tomorrow afternoon.”
The trouble showed itself around midday.
They came around a bend in the ridgeline, and the smell hit them first. Sulfurous, acidic, like rotten eggs mixed with hot metal. Everyone’s face twisted in the same instant.
“What is—” Marena started.
“Quiet.” Garrett raised his fist. The group stopped.
Ahead, the ridge widened into a broad shelf of rock, almost flat, dotted with scrub and a few skeletal trees. In the center of it, resting around a cluster of boulders like some grotesque nest, rested a creature.
A fat lizard the size of a house, with stone-like scales, many covered by moss. A ridge of bony plates ran down its back, its head broad and flat, crocodilian, with nostrils that leaked thin trails of yellowish vapor.
“Ridgeback basilisk,” Garrett whispered, pulling the group behind a rock outcropping. “This one’s dangerous. It’s bloated with acid, which corrodes metal and burns skin.”
Alsen pondered the durability of this creature. He could lance it with relative surety… but would it be enough to kill it? Or would it release a cloud of acid while getting enraged?
He wasn’t sure.
Theron leaned closer to Luna. “It’s non-edible.”
“And resistant to magic,” Marena added towards Alsen.
Fair enough. He probably could blast it anyway, but this didn’t seem to be the time for that.
“In short, this one isn’t worth fighting.” Garrett’s tone carried no hesitation. “It’s usually not guarding anything valuable, as its breath melts it all away.”
But it was probably worth a lot of experience. He exchanged a glance with Luna. They clearly followed the same line of logic.
They also belonged to a group now, and the vault had priority.