Chapter 27
They pulled the cart as close as they could, unhitched the horse, and crowded in.
Wind had blown branches into the cave, from which Alsen promptly started a fire with a focused burst of energy.
Within minutes, they had warmth, light, and the claustrophobic reality of six people plus a horse in a space meant for four.
Luna found the furthest viable corner and sat with her back against the stone. She cleaned the water off her sleeping bag. It was waterproof from the outside, but still.
The group settled. Arleria organized the watches.
Derell cleaned his sword, which didn’t need cleaning, but gave him something to do that wasn’t talking to people.
Malick pulled food from the cart’s supplies and started assembling a meal.
Kern sat near the open edge, watching the storm with the patient attention of a man who’d spent a lot of his life watching things.
Luna waited until the others were occupied, then unrolled her sleeping bag.
In a shelter where everyone was cold, wet, and miserable, she slipped into a pocket of pure softness and warmth.
The fabric caught the firelight in a way that ordinary material didn’t, a faint shimmer that could be mistaken for a trick of the light.
She disappeared into warmth and silence while everyone else shivered.
Derell watched her from across the fire. His expression said plenty about what he thought of a civilian who had yet to contribute in any way and was now taking a nap.
Malick, working on the meal, glanced at the sleeping bag and then at Luna’s face, the only part of her visible. “That’s a quality bag. Where’d you get it?”
“A store in Ambervale.”
“Must have cost a fortune.”
“Adventuring pays well. When you know what you’re doing.”
Alsen watched the exchange from where he sat beside Arleria. He knew the bag’s story, remembered the runes she took from the temple, and also knew this conversation wasn’t going to end well. So, he went for a redirect. “The storm should pass by morning. We can make up the distance tomorrow.”
The topic shifted. Luna vanished deeper into the bag.
The evening settled into the routine of people waiting out the weather.
Conversation happened in small clusters.
Derell and Malick talked about gear maintenance.
Kern cleaned his bowstring. Arleria and Alsen sat with their backs to the wall, close enough that their shoulders almost touched, and drifted into a magic discussion.
That was when Arleria broke the silence. “We should practice identification scans,” she said, pulling her focus from the storm. “You’ve been refining the bleed technique, haven’t you?”
Alsen nodded. “I’m still calibrating the secondary probe. The feedback’s inconsistent.”
“Try it on real objects. Start simple.” She gestured toward the group’s gear. “Derell’s armor has three enchantments. See if you can isolate all three.”
Alsen smiled. Game on. He scanned Derell’s armor, feeling the magical signatures embedded in the steel. A hardening enchantment, layered deep. A corrosion ward, thin but persistent. And something else, faint, almost imperceptible. “Comfort regulation?”
“Temperature adjustment,” Arleria corrected. “Close enough. It keeps the metal from freezing against the skin in winter. Useful, though not particularly powerful.”
They moved to Malick’s warhammer. Two enchantments, both offensive. Weight manipulation and impact amplification. Then Kern’s bow, which had a single, elegant enchantment for draw stability.
Alsen was enjoying this. It was the first time someone had taught him a practical magical technique since arriving in this world.
Arleria corrected his methods with the patience of a good teacher, with some extra hands-on guidance added on top.
She guided his perception, showed him how to read the bleed’s echo, how to distinguish between layered enchantments and single enchantments with multiple effects.
Her hand touched his arm when she directed his attention, the gesture somewhere between instructive and intimate.
“Try the cart,” she said.
He scanned. Nothing enchanted. “Clean.”
“Good. Now...” Her eyes drifted across the shelter, a smile creeping on his lips. “Have you ever scanned your dead weight’s, I mean, your companion’s sleeping bag?”
He rolled his eyes. “No.”
“Then let’s do it together.” Arleria didn’t wait for permission, firing up a scan toward Luna’s corner.
Her expression changed.
Not dramatically. Arleria was far too controlled for that. But her scan slowed. She swept again, more carefully, the magical equivalent of squinting. Her lips parted. Closed. Parted again.
“That’s a very magical sleeping bag,” she said quietly, so that only Alsen could hear. “I can detect… twenty-six runes? Maybe twenty-seven.”
Alsen used his own scan. Luna’s sleeping bag. It shone brightly in the scan, an entire circle of runes floating above it. He counted twenty-seven runes. He kept his expression neutral. “She’s had it for a while. I think she bought it from Ambervale and had it further enhanced.”
“The most runes I have ever seen on an item is twelve. I didn’t know runesmiths who work at this level exist, much less in the Vellhorn area.
” Arleria’s eyes moved from the sleeping bag to the few strands of hair that spilled from its opening.
“This is worth tens of thousands of gold, if it can even be valued at all.”
“She’s resourceful.”
“Evidently.” The word carried a lot of weight. This didn’t add up to her, and Alsen knew that.
But she didn’t push further. Arleria wasn’t the type to press when she sensed resistance. She filed information the way she filed magical signatures, efficiently, categorically, available for later retrieval. But the look she gave Luna’s corner lasted a beat longer than casual curiosity.
Alsen changed the subject. He fished through his pockets and found the necklace of the goblin chief. He finally had a way to identify what it did. “Want to guess what this does?”
Arleria scanned it with an increasingly disgusted gaze. “Aside from spreading filth and diseases?”
He focused on the magic scan. The spell washed over the item, its runic effect appearing: Necklace of Goblin Supremacy. Significantly increases the wearer’s authority amongst the goblinkind.
Well, that didn’t do much. He threw it out of the cave.
They moved on to discussing theoretical scan modifications, and the moment passed. But it hadn’t vanished. It had been filed.
Later, as the fire burned lower and people drifted toward sleep, Malick approached Luna’s corner. He carried an extra blanket. “You’re closest to the opening,” he said. “Wind might pick up in the night. Want a cover?”
Luna peeked out from the bag. “I’m fine.”
“Are you sure? That bag’s nice, but it’s going to get cold in the night.”
“I am fine.”
“What about sharing? We could huddle up the bags closer to share some warmth.”
“No.” The word came out flat, final, without aggression but without room for negotiation.
Malick raised his hands. “Right. Just offering.” He returned to his spot.
Derell caught the exchange. His expression communicated a very clear told you so.
Luna pulled the bag tighter and tucked herself deeper.
The storm broke overnight. Dawn arrived clean and cold, the sky washed to a pale blue that looked almost hopeful. Water ran in thin streams down every hillside, and the air smelled of wet stone and crushed grass.
They packed camp and continued north. The terrain climbed steadily, the hills growing steeper, the vegetation thinning. Views opened up between the slopes, wide valleys stretching eastward, the distant shimmer of a river catching the morning sun.
The group’s rhythm settled into something more functional.
Derell stopped grumbling about Luna, mostly because she made herself so unobtrusive that complaining about her would have required acknowledging she existed.
She broke down her sleeping area before anyone else was awake, carried her own gear without comment, and when Malick handed out rations at the midday stop, she took hers with a nod and ate apart from the group.
Kern continued watching her. Not openly. But his scouting routes developed a pattern where he’d return to the group from her direction, passing close enough to observe before moving on. Alsen noticed and wondered how long this had been going on. He filed Kern as competent.
The afternoon stretched. Alsen and Arleria walked together again, their conversation drifting between magical theory and something warmer.
She laughed at something he said and touched his arm.
He looked at her the way he had been looking at her since they met, open and unguarded and happy, and Luna, walking behind the cart, focused very hard on the interesting qualities of the nature passing by the road’s side.
They made good time. By late afternoon, they had descended into a shallow valley where the road widened, and the terrain flattened enough for comfortable camping. A stream cut through the center, bordered by scrub trees and flat ground.
Someone was already there.
The smoke came first, visible above the treeline a quarter mile before they reached the camp. Then voices, plural, carrying the loose volume of people who weren’t worried about being heard.
Kern materialized at Arleria’s side. “Group ahead. At least ten people, more likely close to fifteen. Set up by the stream.”
Arleria raised a hand, signaling a stop.
Alsen fired out a wide-spectrum magic scan. Unlike before, Luna’s sleeping bag pinged into his mind. He found traces of magic around the people, but nothing noteworthy. “No spellcasters or major magical items.”
Derell moved to the front. “We go around.”
“There’s nowhere to go around to,” Arleria said. “This is the only reasonable campsite before the pass. The next sheltered ground is half a day further.”
“Then we push through.”