Chapter 26
The morning came, and Luna awoke first, already sitting on the windowsill when Alsen opened his eyes.
She had been there for an hour. She’d considered waking him up four separate times. The first three, she decided to wait. The fourth, she picked up his boot and weighed it in her hand for a full minute before setting it back down.
He stirred. Blinked. Saw her.
“Morning,” he said, then paused, clearly trying to remember when she’d arrived and whether he’d missed something. The answer to both was yes, and the pause confirmed he knew it.
“Morning.” Luna didn’t move from the windowsill. Her tone was level. Not warm, not hostile. The kind of neutral that made smart people nervous. “So nice of you to notice me, for once.”
Alsen sat up. He ran a hand through his hair and looked at her with the expression of someone who had just realized they’d been ignoring the wolf in the room. “Luna, I—”
“You’ve been busy getting the supremely divine lance of complete annihilation polished by the witch? Did she pay attention to the twin dawns too?”
He rubbed his face with his palm. “No,” he had the decency to look uncomfortable. “I owe you an apology. I’ve been... absent.”
“You walked past me two nights ago. Looked straight through me. I literally greeted you, and you ignored me.”
He winced. A genuine wince, not a performed one. “I’m sorry. I truly didn’t notice.”
“It was.” She waited.
He swung his legs off the bed. The fancy boots sat where he’d left them.
“I should have talked to you earlier. And, don’t get too mad, but I’ve gotten us a job as a part of Arleria’s group.
A mountain expedition, investigating something in the passes north of here.
Merchants going missing, drakes getting kidnapped, nothing complicated. Lord Edric is funding it.”
“Oh, yeah? What happened to searching for the main temple? You know, spiral religion, six-star formation, the end of all magic. Remember that?”
The question landed exactly where she aimed it.
Alsen’s expression shifted, a flicker of something, guilt, maybe, or the recognition that his justifications weren’t as solid as he’d built them up to be.
His eyebrows rose. “I do,” he admitted. “But that’s not urgent.
It won’t vanish just because we take a little side quest.”
“Sure, we can go do a side quest. Then you date Arleria for a week. Then one more side quest. Then you get yourselves a house, settle down, breed a couple of magelings out of her, and then you won’t even remember what you used to be after.”
He rolled his eyes. “It’s nothing like that. Arleria knows a lot about the magical practice of this world, which is extremely useful to me. The job pays well, and there might be old temples and their remains around.”
“Might,” Luna repeated.
“There’s a reasonable chance.”
“You arranged to join her group.”
“Yes.” He met her eyes. “For both of us. I realize it’s the exact same thing I did last time, and this is unlikely to be the last time I do this. We go with them, get to know what we can, and then we continue the temple search.”
Did he mention her? She didn’t remember seeing that. “And if the side quest stretches out? Weeks instead of days?”
“It won’t. With the two of us, this will be child’s play.
We go after the main temple next. I promise.
Plus, we don’t have an actual lead to follow on the temple since the map in the original temple isn’t interpretable for us.
We’ve also got nothing on the Pellicle. The recurring problems in the mountain could well be connected to either of our objectives, as they are obviously linked to magic. ”
“And in the meantime, you need to invest more time into Arleria to see how well she takes the supremely divine lance.”
He didn’t see her so simply. In fact, he planned to convince Arleria to join his group instead and to travel with them to find the remnants of the spiral faith. That was not an argument to present to Luna right now, though. “That’s not why I’m—”
“Alsen.” She held up a hand. “Do what you want. You will anyway.”
The words sat between them. She didn’t say them with anger, or with spite, or with any of the sharpness she’d been rehearsing for two days. They came out flat, honest, and tired.
He looked at her for a long moment. Something passed behind his eyes, an awareness that he’d miscalculated, that the damage was more serious than a missed greeting or an ignored wave. But whatever the awareness was, it wasn’t enough to change the trajectory. She could see that too.
“We leave tomorrow morning,” he said. “And I’d appreciate it if you came with us.”
So, now us meant him and Arleria. Fucking wonderful. Luna slipped off the windowsill. She landed on her feet, picked up her backpack, and headed for the door. The normal way, this time. She felt too tired for windows.
“Luna.”
She stopped. Didn’t turn.
“I’m sorry.”
“I know,” she said, and left.
Alsen sat on the bed for a while after she left.
The morning light caught the silver threading on his doublet, which hung over the chair. Outside, Vellhorn’s usual noise filled the street, vendors, carts, and a dog barking at something.
He replayed the conversation. The flat tone. The tiredness in her voice. The way she said do what you want like she was letting go of something she’d been gripping too hard.
He’d been an ass. He knew that. The charisma points helped him navigate social situations, but they didn’t prevent him from being a shitty friend. That part was entirely organic.
The problem was that knowing it didn’t change anything. Arleria’s group was leaving tomorrow. The job was real, the money was real, and the research potential was real. And Arleria was... too good to let go.
He got dressed, left the inn, and headed to meet Arleria in the adventurer’s guild.
Luna navigated the underground by memory after spending the entire day loitering around the city. At least the street food here was good. Well, the roasted sausages were. She hadn’t tried any others yet.
The fishbone marks appeared at the usual places. She passed the herbalist, took the side street, and stopped before Kallas’s shop. The guard at the door recognized her from last time and stepped aside without a word.
Inside, the forge was cold. The workshop smelled of metal dust and something herbal, an incense Kallas must have burned while working. The magnifying apparatus had been moved to the main workbench, and beside it sat her sleeping bag.
It looked different. The exterior hadn’t changed much, the same dark fabric, the same general shape. But it seemed to sit differently, as if it weighed more. It looked a lot fluffier too.
Kallas emerged from a back room. He looked tired, almost as if he hadn’t slept much. His mustache drooped more than before. But when he saw her, his expression shifted into something Luna couldn’t recognize.
“It’s finished,” he said. “I used everything you brought. The cloth, the runes, the gems. All of it went into the bag.”
Luna approached the workbench. She ran her fingers over the sleeping bag. The surface felt different. Smoother, like running her hand over still water. A faint warmth pulsed from within, barely perceptible, steady, and alive.
“Self-cleaning is at eight times the original efficiency,” Kallas continued, his hands clasped behind his back.
The pose of a craftsman presenting his finest work.
“Any bodily fluid, any residue, will be dissolved within moments after being put in. The comfort enhancement is woven into the inner lining. It adapts to body temperature and adjusts softness. The sound dampening is layered into the outer shell. Anything within will be inaudible outside. It should also perfectly isolate heat inside.”
Luna pulled the bag open. The inside looked plush beyond reason. The fur lining barely looked like itself, reminding her of a cloud more than anything else. She resisted the urge to climb in right there.
“Did the gems suffice for payment?” she asked.
Kallas shook his head. “I used them as catalysts to strengthen the enhancement. There is no need for payment.”
“Don’t be stupid. This took a lot of work.”
“I grew up in the faith of the God of Thousand Faces.” He met her eyes.
Something in them had gone deep and quiet.
“I was a boy when I first heard the greetings. My parents taught me. Mother raised me in the teachings of the Thousand Faced, as her mother raised her, and her mother before that. Every prayer whispered in basements. Every story told in the dark, when the dragon’s ears couldn’t reach. ”
Luna stood still.
“I spent my entire youth believing in something I had never seen,” Kallas continued.
His voice was steady, but the weight behind it pressed against the walls.
“Even as the dragons burnt the temples, my parents believed. They believed the envoys would vanish and hide with the faithful. That they would evade the dragons, and await the first harbinger to appear in this world.” He looked at the sleeping bag, then back at her.
“I never truly believed it. I kept the faith out of love for her, not conviction. Years ago, I abandoned the faith. Why worship something that exists only in whispers? Why wait for envoys I never met, even when the faith wasn’t being hunted? But then… I met a harbinger.”
Luna sighed. She took the sleeping bag and held it over her shoulder. “May you one day see a face of God.” She headed out of the shop.
He bowed as she left.
The morning of departure arrived with the kind of gray, overcast sky that promised nothing and delivered rain.
Luna had packed the night before. The enhanced sleeping bag fit over her backpack perfectly. She slept in it last night, on the inn’s roof. The inside was warmer, softer, and quieter than before. It was worth every rune she spent on it.
Alsen was ready when she came down to the room. New clothes, spellbook in his pack, and an expression that balanced between anticipation and the lingering awareness that he’d been a bad travel partner. He looked at her. “Ready?”