[ Mount Horen ]
It was 2 days before the raid and Arlen's exercise was the last one.
"A hike," he had said, in the early morning before the sun had even risen – with unreasonably cheerful enthusiasm – to the fifty or so raid members assembled in formation below the stage. "We're going on a hike and we're going to pick flowers." Summit of the mountain. To pick winter lilies. Back by afternoon tomorrow. The purpose of the exercise was to prepare them for what they'd be doing in the gate, in between battling monsters – more or less, trekking through the wild and camping under open sky.
Survival skills.
Sera's legs were aching.
Three hours on her knees the night before, then up before the crack of dawn, then assembly with her mountain gear packed. And now she was hiking a sharp incline up the side of a mountain. Her body had opinions about that sequence and was expressing them clearly with every step up the rocky path.
She wasn't alone. Espers, guides, and support personnel around her were also grunting and straining with physical effort. Packs heavy on everyone's shoulders. She reached for the wyvern mana out of habit – the warmth of it had been sitting in her core for days, nourishing and vital – and found the familiar comfort of it still there. Used a bit to reinforce her moving legs. But it was thin like watered down gruel. She would run out soon. It had not lasted as much as she had wanted it to. Sera had budgeted carefully, but extraneous events - Arlen's spar, rescuing Yuria, Rena's punishment, drained it faster than she was comfortable with. Told herself to budget with more surprises in mind next time.
She looked forward, past the espers trudging ahead of her, into the far distance. Rian and Arlen were ahead of the raid by a considerable amount, their figures marking small black shapes on the horizon ahead.
She had been aware of Rian's whereabouts the moment the column set out. Not dramatically. Just as a fact. She wasn't sure why, but she was always conscious of his location now. He and Arlen were already pulling ahead within the first twenty minutes, the gap between them and the rest of the raid force widening steadily. Nobody was catching up. Nobody was going to – most team members were already gasping from the sharp elevation. Again, she thought once more, S-rankers are something else.
She watched his back and the night came back without asking.
Rena had appeared at nine exactly. Relieved her of her pack.
Sera had tried to stand, but her knees had been on dirt for three hours and they had forgotten what standing felt like and they expressed this by buckling immediately. Her arms, which were incapable of doing anything but existing as dead jelly, could not catch her as she tumbled forward.
Rian's hand had caught her boneless elbow and lifted her up back to her feet.
"Thanks," she said, tensing the muscles in her legs to keep her upright.
He let go. Said nothing.
Rena took his pack as well, silent. And then the three of them stood in the dark field for a moment – Rena looking at Rian, Rian looking at Sera, and Sera focusing on the project of remaining upright.
Then they went their separate ways.
She watched Rian and Rena walk together toward the leaders' wing, voices low, both packs in Rena's hands. Then she turned and wobbled stiffly toward the guide quarters.
The entity had been noisy the whole way. The hippogriff vessel sitting in her core like an impatient passenger, the agreement straining. She hadn't figured out a plan on how to suppress the System alerts. Hadn't had any energy left to figure it out with.
Tomorrow, she had thought, dropping onto her bed without dinner.
The entity had not been pleased about tomorrow.
She had fallen asleep before it could finish expressing this.
Her attention snapped back to the present, back to the mountain.
Behind the two S-ranks the formation had settled into defensive order. Rena and Joel leading the attack espers at the front. Guides and support personnel in the protected middle. Defensive and support espers covering the flanks and back line.
The third hour of the trek was when Sera did the accounting.
She pressed her awareness inward carefully. Finally taking stock of exactly how much of the wyvern's mana was left in her core. She had a rough idea, but now was a good time to do the actual math. She frowned, prodding around at her store. Ten percent. It was nearly gone.
At least her mana regeneration had returned. The System's punishment – the capacity rebound and the secondary suppression, when she had eaten the wyvern's vessel in Yoru's room, expired two days ago and her regeneration had returned. Steadily, it was filling her core, but the pacing was, as expected, frustratingly slow.
Damn debuff, she cursed.
She exhaled and kept trudging up the dirt path. The hippogriff vessel was still sitting in her core doing nothing. The entity's face pressed against the window, eager for her to swallow. It would not wait forever. It had not waited for her with the wyvern.
She needed to figure out the System problem. Tonight. If she could solve it, then it would satisfy the thing inside her, and maybe, it could also drain the debuff counter like the wyvern's had. She was hopeful.
Violet fell into step beside her.
"You're fast," she said. Not looking at Sera. Lilac eyes steadily forward.
Sera glanced at her.
"When you grabbed that researcher. Yuria?" She paused. "It was impressive."
Sera said nothing.
"Why the daggers?" Violet asked, her eyes flicking toward Sera.
"Because she wasn't thinking," Hibiscus said flatly from Sera's other side, adjusting her heavy pack, before Sera could answer. "A guide with close range weapons in a hippogriff exercise. Makes no tactical sense."
Violet looked at her. And then looked back at Sera, still waiting for a response.
Sera smiled. "I don't know. Thought they'd be useful." A blonde curly-haired guide named Eaton snorted. A few others nearby said nothing but their silence leaned in Hibiscus's direction.
"Standard strategy states that close-range weapons for guides against flying monsters–" Hibiscus began.
"It saved Yuria, didn't it?" Violet interjected.
Hibiscus snapped her mouth shut irritably.
"A weakling saving another weakling," a guide from the back called out. "Should have been culled. They'll only drag us down."
Violet frowned, furrowing her brow. "We're guides," she said, her tone neutral. "Shouldn't we have each other's backs? I'm just curious what she's thinking."
"Hard to have someone's back," another guide said from behind, "when you don't know whose bed she crawled out of."
A few quiet laughs. Someone else added something low that Sera didn't catch but understood.
Sera kept her eyes forward. Kept her pace even. Said nothing. She considered the debuff timeline and how it felt to bite through the flesh of a warm body. All that mana they had as Guides, and they could only wield power as social pressure. What a waste. Their vessels would be more useful digested in her core.
Violet looked at the guide who had spoken.
"She might be a slut," Violet countered. Sera winced at the wording. "But she's a slut on our team." Her eyes burned sharp toward the snickering group. "If your esper climbs into her bed, how is that her problem and not yours?"
Nobody said anything after that.
They trekked in silence.
Sera glanced at Violet. When they had first met, Violet seemed indifferent and she expected more or less the same response from her as from the other guides. Pleasant surprise.
Purple eyes. Rian had them. So did Violet.
She seemed to like people with purple eyes.
Wait.
She shook her head, clearing her thoughts – didn't want to go down a train of thought she didn't understand – and continued planting one foot steadily in front of the other.
✦ ♡ ✦
When the column stopped for lunch, Holt's team found a flat stretch of rock and grass and settled without being told to.
It happened naturally – squads peeling away from the larger formation and reassembling into the smaller units they knew. The people you'd be standing next to in battle finding each other on a mountain without discussion.
Kael had a fire going before anyone had fully put their pack down.
Nobody commented on this. It was simply a fact of Kael – he moved fast when there was something to do and complained generously while doing it. He had produced a small folding knife from somewhere and was chopping produce with surprising energetic efficiency, his red hair fluttering whenever the breeze lifted through it.
Holt crouched beside the cooking pot, watching the contents, occasionally stirring, occasionally adding in whatever Kael handed him.
Yoru had his back against a rock, long legs stretched out, already eating an apple he'd pulled from his own pack. He caught Sera's eye when she sat down and nudged one toward her without saying anything. She accepted it with a small thanks and bit into it. He threw another one toward Hibiscus.
Mira sat cross-legged nearby, needle in hand, quiver holding the rest on her back. Still communing. Even here. Sweat dripped off her brow.
Sera finished a bite of her apple and looked at Mira.
"Does she ever stop?" she mused out loud.
Yoru looked up. "Stop what?" he asked.
"That," Sera nodded her head toward Mira. "Communing."
"Doubt it," Kael interjected, from the fire, not looking up. "She communes in her sleep. I've seen it."
"That's not possible," Ophelia said.
"I've seen it," Kael repeated.
"You dreamt about it," Yoru said.
"I know what I saw."
Holt said nothing. His expression said he had also seen things and had made peace with them.
"She's going to ascend before the raid," Kael said, not looking up from his chopping. "With all that meditation. She'll become a bodhisattva. Just float right past the gate. Wave at us on her way up."
A few quiet laughs.
"Shut up," Mira said, without opening her eyes. "You're making it noisy." She flipped Kael a finger in his general direction. It was slightly off mark. "And you're giving this one an ego." She turned the needle once between her fingers. "He doesn't need that right now."
Silence.
"...he?" Kael said.
"The needle," Ophelia said quietly.
Kael looked at the needle. Then at Mira. Then back at the needle.
"Made it a man because you were lonely?" Kael quipped.
Mira opened one eye. Looked at him. Closed it again.
"Please," she said.
Kael opened his mouth.
"Don't," Holt said, without looking up from the pot.
Kael closed his mouth – he went back to chopping.
Ophelia giggled.
"Come on," Ophelia said, looking at Kael. "Don't tease Mira." She laughed, a gentle lilt ringing through the air. "Knowing you – your weapon is a girl?"
Kael reached behind his ear and produced a thin, golden rod the size of a chopstick. He held it up between two fingers.
"Beatrice," he said.
He tapped it once and it expanded – staff length, full weight, the crack of it snapping out sharp in the mountain air. He caught it without looking. Tapped it again. Chopstick. Tucked it back behind his ear.
"She's a beaut," he said.
Silence.
"Beatrice," Yoru said.
"Beatrice," Kael confirmed.
"That's–" Yoru started.
"Perfect," Ophelia said. She eyed Yoru, giving him a look, he smiled a fanged grin in response.
Kael pointed at her. "Thank you."
"What's his name?" Hibiscus asked, looking at Mira.
Mira was quiet for a moment.
"Theor," she said.
"That's a good name," Hibiscus said.
"I know."
Holt set the ladle down.
"Left," he said. He held up his left hand, knuckle dusters catching the firelight. "Right." He held up the other.
"You named your knuckle dusters Left and Right?" Kael asked.
"Yes."
"That's–"
"Practical," Holt said. And picked up the ladle.
Ophelia's staff was named Chorus. She said this simply, without elaboration, and nobody asked for any because the name was so obviously correct.
Yoru produced a slim dagger from somewhere – dark handle, slight iridescence to the blade. Poison-type.
He turned it once.
"No name," he said.
"Why not?" Ophelia asked.
"Haven't found the right one yet."
"Have they started talking back yet?" Ophelia asked, looking between Yoru and Kael.
Yoru shook his head.
Kael considered this.
"She has opinions about grip," he said. "Does that count?"
"Not quite," Ophelia said. "Chorus started humming last year. Just – quietly. When I'm tired."
"Humming," Yoru said.
"Like she's keeping time."
Holt looked at his knuckle dusters.
"Left pulls right sometimes," he said. "When I'm going the wrong direction."
"That's how it starts," Ophelia said. "The mana gets dense enough and they begin responding. To us. And what we need."
Hibiscus looked up from her apple.
"How long does it take?"
"Depends on the esper. Depends on the weapon." Ophelia looked at Mira. "Mira's been communing with Theor every day for two years."
"He's close," Mira said, without opening her eyes. "I can feel him thinking. Not words yet, but he's there. Just being…a little stubborn."
The fire crackled.
"Guides don't really do that," Hibiscus said. Guides didn't fight enough for the entrenchment to happen and most guide weapons were communal – borrowed weapons from the guild – unlike their esper counterparts.
Sera ate her apple.
"I had one," she said.
The gathering went quiet.
"No way," Kael refuted. "Really?"
"Really," she responded. She took another bite of her apple. "A polearm. Lost it in a…" she hesitated. "...gate break."
Nobody said anything for a moment.
"What was its name?" Yoru asked.
Sera looked off into the distance over a canopy of evergreen trees.
Something moved through her – a soft, nostalgic feeling. A warmth along her palms where a shaft had rested for years. A gentle, feminine voice, soft and melodic, arriving in an affectionate familiarity that had learned language from the person who carried it and sounded like her and wasn't her.
Sera.
No matter what. I'll stay with you.
And then the portal. And the weapon she held disintegrated into dust. Sacrificed for her escape. She had arrived, naked – stripped of everything but the hair on her head – alone.
"Salome," she muttered softly, recalling how the gentle thrum of the polearm felt beneath her fingers. The way it sang to her when they had sat lazily on a grassy hill, watching Ratiora's two suns set over the imperial city.
"Salome…of the Sea."