3. Chapter 3 The Gate #3
The third man stepped up for a better look. "A human with the animals. That's a new one."
I stopped walking.
One of the women said something to the tall man I didn't catch, low and amused. The second man said something about Bjorna's size, what she probably needed to eat to keep it, and the words hit me in the chest before I'd decided what to do with them.
Bjorna hadn't broken stride. She kept walking, her pace unchanged, her eyes forward.
I turned toward them. My hands went tight at my sides and the anger came up fast, the kind that filled my whole chest and wanted somewhere to go. The tall man was still looking at me with that expression when I took a step in his direction.
Bjorna's hand closed on my arm.
Her grip was firm, not painful, not rough. She'd done this before. She didn't turn around. She didn't look at the human party. She looked at me.
"Daniel."
She said my name in the tone that meant ‘stop.’
"They don't get to say that about you," I growled.
"They can and they do. Every time." Her voice was level, steady, without heat. "It isn't worth a fight before a run. We need you whole and we need them behind us. Just ignore them. They are looking for a reaction. Don’t give them one."
I stood there with her hand on my arm and the anger sitting in my chest like something I'd swallowed wrong. The tall man's group was still watching. One of them said something else that ended in a laugh, and the sound of it made my jaw clench.
Sif was beside me. Her blue eyes went past the human party, flat and hard, her jaw tight. She spoke without raising her voice.
"Don’t waste your time or energy on those buffoons. They wouldn’t last five seconds against us. Hell, they wouldn’t last five seconds against Bjorna."
It wasn't loud enough for them to hear. It was loud enough for me.
Liv had gone quiet. Her ears were down, pressed flat against her skull, and she was looking at the ground in front of her feet. Her shoulders had pulled in tight, smaller than they should have been on a woman who took stairs two at a time and grinned at everything.
Nott was still.
She stood a step behind Bjorna with her dark eyes locked on me, not on the human party.
The same focused, reading look she'd given me at Mildred's shop when she'd decided my question about her casting was real.
She took in all of it, me going for them, Bjorna pulling me back, and she didn't say a word.
She'd asked me yesterday why I healed the beastkin. Now she was watching the answer walk itself out in front of her.
Bjorna released my arm. "Walk," she said. "We have a dungeon to clear. Don’t make me pick you up and carry you."
“Yeah, I’ll pass. Let’s go,” I replied.
I walked. The anger didn't leave. It sat behind my ribs where I'd put it, and I carried it with me down the path. Bjorna was right. They weren’t worth our time.
We had much better things to do. One fight with a group of asshole humans was not going to suddenly heal racism across the world. I had to learn to pick my battles.
The path dropped away from the clearing through a line of trees that thinned as the ground went low. The noise of the staging area faded behind us. Other parties were on the path too, their voices carrying ahead and then falling off as they spread out or turned off at their own instance markers.
Cold Hollow's mouth came into view, same as I remembered.
A stone arch cut into the side of a hill, natural rock framed with worked stone that someone had laid a long time ago.
The air coming out of it was colder than the air around us, and heavier, more compressed.
It carried a smell I recognized from my first run, mineral and deep, like stone that had never known sunlight.
I'd gone in here before at Level 30 with a party of strangers. I was going back in at a higher level with a party that knew me. Both of those facts mattered.
Bjorna stopped at the entrance. She turned and looked at each of us. Her dark eyes held on each face for a count and then moved to the next.
"Standard formation. Sif on point. Liv reads the chambers ahead. Nott, you're mid with Daniel behind you. I hold the line."
Sif was already moving toward the arch, her daggers loose in their sheaths, her stride shifting from travel pace to something tighter and sharper.
Liv fell in behind her with her bow in her hand and her ears locked forward, scanning for sounds no one else would catch.
Bjorna moved past me toward the arch, her shield already on her arm, and the stone opening looked smaller with her standing in it.
She ducked through and was gone. Nott stepped to the side and waited for me to take my position.
I fell in behind her. The cold from the mouth settled on my skin and the air changed.
"Ready?" Nott said. She didn't turn around.
"Right behind you. Let's go."
She stepped through the arch. I went after her. The daylight dimmed at my back and the stone closed in overhead and my Status updated at the edge of my vision.
[Cold Hollow. Depth: 1.]
The party was ahead of me. The dungeon waited below. I went in.