5. Chapter 5 The Brood Mother #3
"The dark metal is called blackstone," Nott said, turning one of the discs between her fingers. "It trades well. This alone is worth more than everything we've picked up in the last three runs combined."
"So the almost dying was worth it," Sif said from the wall.
"Nobody almost died," Bjorna said.
"I almost died. You didn’t see my collision against the fucking wall?"
"Just a couple of scrapes, I’m sure."
"I lost count of all the bones that were broken, you wench."
"Daniel fixed them. Quit whining." Bjorna smiled at Sif. "Are you walking?"
Sif tested it. She got her feet under her and stood, carefully, one hand on the wall. She straightened and let go and held steady. She was upright but definitely woozy.
"I'm walking," she said.
"Then we go up. We loot on the way. There should be a lot of it."
***
The climb back through Cold Hollow took longer than the descent. The chambers were empty, the creatures dead or dissolved, and the silence sat heavy and spent.
We looted as we went. Bjorna and Nott worked the bodies and the remains in each cleared chamber, pulling coins, crystals, and materials. The haul accumulated. By the time we reached depth two, Nott's Ring of Holding was carrying more value than we'd earned in a week of contracts.
I stayed near Sif. She was walking but each step was careful, and twice she put her hand on the wall in a passage to steady herself. I didn't reach for her. She wouldn't have wanted that. But I walked close enough that she knew I was there.
The cold came back at depth one. After the humid warmth of the deep chambers, the compressed chill of Cold Hollow's upper levels was clean and sharp. Sif's shoulders loosened when the cold hit her face.
"That feels amazing," she said.
"The cold?"
"Yes. It was so damn hot down there." She glanced at me. "It felt like I was in a fucking rectum."
“Gross,” I replied nonchalantly. It was good seeing Sif return to herself.
Daylight came through the entry passage ahead of us, pale and clean. We came out of the mouth of Cold Hollow into afternoon sunlight. I stopped and took a breath that went all the way down.
Bjorna led us past the threshold and out onto the trail. Brown frozen grass, clear sky. She stopped twenty feet from the entrance and turned. All five of us, standing in the daylight, tired down to the bone.
"Good run," she said. “It took all of us.”
Liv broke her silence. “Without Daniel, we wouldn’t make it out alive. Thank you.”
“It was a team effort. I’m glad I could help,” I said with a shrug.
“Humble as always. It’s sickening,” Nott said.
“Wow, look at Nott with the ball-busting!” I said, laughing.
The walk back toward the staging area was quiet. Bjorna and Nott were in front, Liv a step behind them, Sif and I at the back. Sif's stride was shorter than usual and she held her right arm close to her body, not from pain but from habit. The heal had done its work. Her body hadn't caught up yet.
"You crossed the chamber," she said.
I looked at her. “Huh?”
"When I went down. You were at the back and you crossed the whole chamber to get to me. Through the spawn, through all of it."
"You needed healing. That's what I do."
"That's not what I'm saying." She looked ahead at the trail.
Her silver hair was loose, the leather cord lost somewhere in the fight.
It fell across her face and she pushed it back with the hand that wasn't held close.
"I've been in parties before. Good ones.
Serious ones. Healers stay in the back. That's where they're safe and that's where they belong.
They don't cross a boss chamber with creatures on the ground. "
"I can send [Mend] at range for scrapes and bruises, but your ribs were broken and you were bleeding inside. I wasn't going to gamble on that from thirty feet away," I said.
"I know. That's the point." She stopped walking and turned to face me.
Her blue eyes were steady. The teasing, the flirting, the confident front she put on everything, all of it was gone.
What was underneath was harder to look at.
"You came to get me. You left cover and you came to get me. Nobody told you to. You just went."
"It wasn't a hard decision. You were hurt. You’re important to me. Don’t forget that. I’ll always come for you. No matter what."
She held my eyes. Then something in her face shifted. A look she'd never let me see before, unguarded and real, just there on her face like she'd decided to stop covering it.
"Thank you, Daniel. I mean it. I say a lot of shit, but I really mean it. Thank you." She said it with nothing behind it but the words themselves.
"You're welcome,” I replied. “Try not to get hit by any more giant monsters the rest of the afternoon."
The grin came back, slower than usual, smaller. "No promises."
She started walking again and I fell into step beside her.
Ahead of us, Bjorna and Nott were talking quietly, and Liv had dropped back to give us space without being obvious about it.
The staging area was coming into view through the trees, the low stone building and the open ground where the parties gathered.
Sif's shoulder bumped mine as we walked. She didn't move away.
I didn't either.