Chapter 28 #5
“Frost harpies,” Arleria answered. She’d recovered faster than the rest of them, her composure clicking into place. She knelt by the nearest corpse, running a scan over it. “They’re supposed to be extinct in this region. The drakes had wiped them out over a decade ago.”
“Wonderful,” Derell said. “And now the harpies are back, and killing drakes and caravans in return. That’s just great.”
“It indeed explains the caravan attacks.” Arleria continued her examination. “They’re pack hunters. The scream disrupts concentration, which would be devastating against a merchant escort that relied on a single mage for protection.”
Alsen looked at the creature’s body. Up close, the ice crystals growing from its spine and joints were almost beautiful, complex geometric patterns that caught light in prismatic bursts. The three-toed feet explained the tracks Kern had found. The claws explained the wagon.
Kern appeared from wherever he’d gone during the aftermath. He looked at Derell’s shoulder, then at the three bodies, then at Arleria. His eyebrows performed a complex sequence that translated roughly to manageable but unpleasant.
“Derell, let me look at that,” Arleria said.
“It’s just a bruise. The claws didn’t get through.”
“It’s through your enchanted armor.”
Derell grunted but let her examine it. The shoulder indeed had no direct wound.
Alsen scanned it. “There’s a magical component to the claws. Some of it spilled over. It will most likely fade, but the shoulder will be slower for the next hour or so.”
Arleria addressed the wound, combining a basic cleansing spell with the medical wraps from their supplies. It was functional, not elegant. They didn’t have a healer.
They didn’t have a lot of things.
“We need to keep moving,” Kern said. He pointed up the ravine, toward where the tracks continued. “These three were a scouting party. There are more.”
“How many more?” Malick asked. He’d cleaned the pulp off his warhammer with a handful of snow. The motion was practiced, almost habitual.
“The tracks suggest at least a dozen distinct individuals using this route. Possibly more.”
Malick looked at his warhammer. Then at Kern. Then at Arleria. “Dozen,” he repeated.
“At least.” He glanced at Alsen. “But if they line up correctly, that’s just one spell.”
Alsen smirked. Indeed. But they weren’t going to just line up. He had burned more mana than he should have on three, already. His mental focus was compromised by the screams, so he needed a break to figure out how to deal with them.
Or just get Luna, so she could go first as bait, anchoring any battle around her. Nobody else from the group could do that.
He thought of the dungeon, of when Luna fell through the kill chute, and suddenly the group felt too thin, too exposed.
Garrett was checking the floor for traps the way he’d seen Luna do it, except slower, clumsier, missing things she would have caught.
The same hollowness was back, magnified by the knowledge that Luna wasn’t trapped somewhere below him this time.
She was gone because the group voted, and he hadn’t argued.
All reasonable. All of it amounted to the fact that his strongest asset was somewhere on a different mountainside, probably roasting another goat, while his group took unnecessary damage fighting three creatures they should have handled cleanly.
Arleria caught his expression. She didn’t say anything, but her eyes held recognition.
She’d felt the dissonance too. The fight hadn’t been dangerous, exactly, but it had been far uglier than it should have been.
Five seasoned adventurers, two of them D-rank, one of them an archmage who could punch holes in mountains, and they’d come out of it with a wounded man and a headache.
“We continue,” Arleria said. “If these things are nesting further up, we need to find the nest. That’s what the merchant guild is paying us for.”
“And the drakes?” Malick asked.
“If the drakes are being held somewhere, this is where we’ll find traces. Frost harpies are territorial. They don’t stray far from their nesting ground.”
Derell rolled his shoulder, testing the bandage. Pain flashed across his face, quickly suppressed. “Fine. Let’s get it done.”
They reformed. Kern ahead, Derell and Malick in the center, Alsen and Arleria in the back. A five-person line moving up a frozen ravine toward a nest of creatures that screamed the concentration out of mages.
Alsen stretched his scan ahead of them, pushing against the limits of his range, searching for the cold, structured signatures of more frost harpies.
He found echoes, faint ones, further up the mountain.
More than three. More than a dozen. A cluster of signatures pulsing in overlapping rhythms, concentrated in what felt like a cave system or natural amphitheater.
He also swept east. One more time. Habit.
Nothing.
He turned his attention back to the path ahead. The snow deepened. The wind returned, howling through the ravine with renewed malice. Somewhere above them, in the frozen dark of the mountain, more creatures waited.
The group climbed.