Chapter 45 – “We can pose if we want to.”
By the time we make camp, the road has gone dark.
We set up across from Bushman Forest in one of the safe-zone clearings, the kind that travelers and adventuring parties have been using long enough that the earth is packed flat and the fire rings are black with old soot. We aren’t alone, either. At least three other groups are scattered through the clearing, each around their own little pocket of light, all of them looking like they had a long day and no interest in making new friends tonight.
That suits me fine.
The forest whispers to itself beyond the road, thorn-vines brushing together in the dark like gossiping spirits. Our own fire cracks and spits, warm against the creeping chill, sparks winding up into a sky full of sharp silver stars.
Raka is stretched against a log with her axe close enough to grab in one motion, tearing into a chunk of roasted meat like she means to punish it. Her fur is still a little damp from the stream and her hair hasn’t fully settled from the day’s fighting, but her golden eyes are bright in the firelight.
“Well, little rabbit,” she says at last, lazy grin pulling at her mouth, “you roasted more of them than I did today. Might be time to hang up my axe.”
Perri, curled into her cloak with both hands around a tin cup of something spiced and spiked, looks up so fast her ears nearly jump out of her hood. “I didn’t mean to steal kills,” she says, cheeks pink already. “I just... didn’t want anyone to get hurt.”
Kit, sprawled across her bedroll like she owns the night, flicks one ear and smirks. “Adorable. Absolutely inefficient, but adorable.” She props her chin in one hand, eyes half-lidded with that catlike amusement she gets when she knows someone is about to embarrass themselves. “Tell me, bunny. Are you going to throw holy fire every time somebody blinks at you wrong?”
Perri huffs.
Then, because the spiked cider has softened her just enough, she lifts her chin and says, “Maybe.”
That gets a chuckle and smirk from all of us.
I lean back on one hand and let the warmth of the fire settle into my bones. The Ring of Sanguis sits cool against my finger. Ed’s on watch. Kit is loose for once. Raka looks satisfied instead of braced. Perri is glowing again, not with magic this time, just pride and exhaustion and the strange relief of surviving something real.
For the first time in a while, it doesn’t feel like I’m dragging someone forward.
It feels like family with teeth.
“You did good today, Perri,” I say.
That quiets her immediately.
She peeks up at me over the rim of her cup, eyes wide in the firelight.
“Better than good,” I add. “You held your ground. You read the line. You protected people.”
The bond hums low and warm between us, a shared pulse of pride that makes her ears twitch.
“I just...” She looks down at the cup again, voice going softer. “I don’t want to let you down.”
Kit stretches like a lazy queen and steals a piece of bread off my plate without even pretending innocence. “Sweetheart, if you keep blasting like that, you’re going to put Raka out of a job.”
Raka snorts. “And I like my job.”
Perri giggles despite herself.
The rest of the night settles in around us after that, low voices, easy teasing, and the quiet clink of cups passing hand to hand. Somewhere across the clearing, another adventuring party’s bard sings in dwarven around its own fire, the tune carrying soft and rough through the dark, but nobody bothers anyone. We all know the shape of this kind of night. Long hunt. Hot food. Keep watch. Sleep light.
By the time our fire burns down to coals, the air between us feels different again.
Perri ends up leaning against my side, shy but proud, her cloak tugged up around her knees. Kit threads her fingers through mine without asking. Raka stretches out nearby with a satisfied grunt, tail thumping once against the ground before going still.
The bond hums low and steady.
Trust and warmth.
The kind you can carry into tomorrow.
The next day goes the way a good hunting day is supposed to go.
Not easy. Not sloppy. Just clean.
Bushman Forest greets us with the same cold hush it always does, the air sharp enough to wake the blood, frost still clinging in pale threads along roots and pine boughs where the light hasn’t burned it off yet. The road and last night’s campfire feel farther behind us than they should. Out here, it’s all damp earth, old bark, and the soft creak of vines shifting where no wind should be touching them.
But the mood in our line is different now.
Raka walks with that low, predatory swagger she gets when she knows exactly what her job is and plans to enjoy it. Kit looks smug in the way she always does after a good night and a better morning, all easy motion and sharper eyes. Perri hums under her breath as she walks, her iridescent cloak catching bits of pale light and tossing tiny rainbows over frost and leaf mold. Even Ed seems... settled. If a thorn revenant made of bone, roses, and eerie devotion can be said to look settled.
We don’t waste time with nerves today.
The first Bushman Scouts come in low through the brush, thorn-whips snapping out like they’ve already decided what part of us they want to thrash.
This time, nobody trips over anybody else.
Kit peels wide before the first lash even lands, spectral armor hugging her in drifting midnight smoke as she baits one of the scouts into lunging too far. It commits to the opening she gives it and pays for that mistake a heartbeat later when she vanishes in a flicker of movement and comes back inside its reach with both daggers already rising.
Echo Step. Veilstrike.
Raka catches the second with Lunar Bulwark, shield meeting thorn-whip in a bright crack of force that throws sparks and shredded bark across the clearing. She does not rush after it. She plants, absorbs, and turns it. That’s the difference now. She doesn’t just take hits.
She decides where they go.
Perri holds.
That is the bigger difference.
No panic fire. No wasted mana. She tracks the line, staff tight in both hands, and when one of the scouts slips through a root-gap too close to Kit’s blind side, Light Barrier flashes into place, gold and ready, catching the strike before it becomes a wound.
Just enough.
Clean.
Controlled.
I keep Stormcast moving in broad, deliberate arcs, using reach and pressure to stop the pack from collapsing inward. The spear lets me keep that shape from forming. A thrust here. A sweep there. Arc Lightning when one gets too clever and tries to use a dead trunk as cover.
When the second wave tries to flank, Ed comes out of the brush like the forest made a worse decision.
A tangle of bone, thorns, and black-red roses crashes into the Bushman at the edge of the line. Thornlash hooks first. Then claws. Then petals and splintering bark and the wet, ugly sound of something learning too late that it picked the wrong side.
By midday, the whole thing starts to sing.
Kit is calling angles without stepping on my lead. Raka is holding center without overcommitting. Perri’s mana stays high because she finally trusts she doesn’t need to solve every problem the second it appears. She shields when it matters, burns when the opening is real, and lets the rest of us do our jobs when that’s the smarter play.
Then the HUD blooms in my sight.
[Perri — Level 16]
She feels it a heartbeat later and looks up, startled, then proud.
The whole line softens for a breath.
Then we keep moving.
And Ed...
Ed is having the time of his unliving life.
Twice he returns from the underbrush carrying bundles of botanical reagents he’s clearly seen us harvest before, all thorn bulbs and vine clusters and sap-heavy cuttings tangled in his claws. It should be useful. Instead, it is deeply unsettling. Watching one plant-horror harvest another feels like crossing a line I can’t quite name.
Kit points at him the second time. “No. Absolutely not. We are not praising that behavior.”
Raka snorts. “I am.”
Perri, to my eternal surprise, giggles.
That’s the other thing about today.
It’s fun.
Not because Bushmen stop being dangerous. They don’t. Thorn volleys still hiss out of nowhere. Lash-vines still snap for ankles and wrists. One Hunter nearly gets a claw into my side before Perri throws Light Barrier into place at exactly the right angle and Raka caves its ribs in for trying. The danger is real.
But so are we.
Somewhere in the middle of our hunt, the HUD blooms in my sight.
[Vincent Locke — Level 19]
I bark a laugh when I see it.
Kit glances back over her shoulder, blood on one blade and a grin already forming. “What?”
“Later,” I say, driving Stormcast through the chest of a Bushman trying to rise for one last bad idea. “Keep moving.”
By the time the light starts to tilt gold, we’ve worked half the outskirts and cleared more than I expected without ever having to retreat, reset, or drag anybody out bleeding.
We come out of it with a respectable little haul too. Silver. A few low-tier trade gems. Some botanical reagents that smell like bitter sap and wet spice. Nothing glamorous, but real coin, real work, real progress.
More importantly, we come out of it with that dangerous kind of confidence that only starts becoming safe once you’ve earned it.
When we finally stop near the edge of the road, Perri crouches beside the loot pile with bright eyes and flushed cheeks, sorting silver from gem shards. Kit flops back against a stump like she personally defeated the forest. Raka rolls one shoulder, satisfied, shield hanging loose at her side. Ed stands just beyond the line of us, still as a grave marker, petals drifting from one shoulder into the cold.
I look at the four of them and feel it settle in my chest.
We worked hard today.
We hunted well, and the difference shows.
We sleep well, but wake early and get right back to it.
The second day starts the way the first one ended, clean, cold, and honest. Frost still clings to the shaded roots and Bushman Forest still wants to turn every good plan into a bad death if you stop paying attention. But we do not stop paying attention.
We work the outskirts hard.
Not recklessly. Not deep enough to tempt the old mistakes. Just smart, steady hunting. Scout packs. Thorn Hunters. Standard Bushmen trying to use deadfall and root tangles to bunch the line. The kind of work that leaves your shoulders sore, your boots muddy, and your coin pouch feeling heavier by degrees instead of miracles.
And the whole time, the machine keeps getting smoother.
Raka sets the shape of the fight the second it starts. Kit slips through the edges of that shape and cuts out whatever gets clever. Perri catches angles before they become wounds and keeps her mana where it belongs, high and useful. Ed drifts through the margins like an omen the forest is starting to regret. I call lanes, break pressure, and keep the whole thing from collapsing inward.
By late afternoon, we are tired in the good way.
The kind that comes with work done right.
The light has gone long and gold through the branches. We are in the middle of another clean pull, three standard Bushmen and a Scout trying to screen them, when the forest answers with a sound I do not like at all. Crashing brush. Shouting. And the unmistakable noise of bad choices catching up to somebody.
Then a thorn-volley hisses somewhere too close on our left, followed by somebody yelling, “Run!”
I do not even have time to swear before two cloaked figures burst through the brush and straight across our fight, whatever stealth they thought they had shredded somewhere behind them. One of them is the Panicked Ranger from one of the other camps, eyes wide and moving like fear is the only thing keeping his legs under him. The other is a rogue, I think, low to the ground and fast even in retreat, hood up and blades still in hand.
The Bushmen come right after.
Two Bushman Scouts and a standard crash through the undergrowth on their heels, not ours, already twisted by fury and bad spacing. Beyond them, I catch only broken glimpses of the rest of that party, steel, shouting, cloaks vanishing through the trees as they drag their disaster away by sheer luck or desperation. They look like they could use help, except not all of their mess is following them anymore.
Because the thing they actually woke up does not follow them.
It joins our fight instead.
I curse under my breath. Was that their plan? Shed some threat and hope it stuck to somebody else?
The Elder Bushman breaks from the trees like the forest itself finally got tired of subtlety. Twice my height if it straightened fully, bark-plate thick across its chest and shoulders, thorn nodules pulsing green-black through the wood. It has more limbs than it should, long vine-arms hanging from its back and sides like spare ideas the world was never meant to finish, each one bristling with thorns the size of daggers.
And it is furious.
Whoever this Elder belonged to a breath ago does not matter now.
It is ours.
“Collapse in!” I bark.
The bond tightens instantly.
Raka is already moving.
She drives straight into the Elder, dragging the two standards she already had with her before the spill can split us, Starburst up, axe low, body planted exactly where she wants the line to hold.
Lunar Bulwark.
The Elder’s Lashing Fury slams into her shield in a spray of sparks, bark splinters, and white force bright enough to burn spots across my vision. The impact booms through the clearing.
She holds.
“Kit, peel and bring down those stray scouts!” I snap. “Perri, eyes on Raka!”
I start to call for Ed, then stop.
He is already moving.
Thorns whip through the brush as he glides after Kit, crashing into the spill before it can widen. One scout turns toward him at exactly the wrong moment.
Kit is there a heartbeat later.
A flicker of leather. A curl of midnight smoke.
Echo Step.
She snaps behind the closest scout Ed has turned and Veilstrike carves it open before its bark-strangled cry can leave its throat. Violet soulfire runs along both daggers, rendering its armor meaningless as the thing folds in on itself and drops.
Blue-white force punches through the first scout’s chest as I loose Arc Lightning, the bolt snapping sideways into the second just as it tries to peel around toward Kit. Both jerk and stagger. Ed is there a breath later, Thornlash whipping around one ankle and yanking it backward into the roots hard enough to crack bark and drop it.
The other party is still shouting somewhere deeper in the brush, dragging the rest of their disaster away.
Not our problem.
This is.
The Elder Bushman slams into Raka with the two standards still pressing beside it, all tendril swings and the weight of three trees at once. Its Lashing Fury comes in ugly and fast, bark, vine-muscle, hooked limbs, and thorn-bites all crashing down where a weaker frontliner would have folded.
Raka does not fold.
She snarls and meets it shield-first, boots gouging trenches through wet leaves as she braces the haft of her axe across Starburst and takes the full force of it head-on, Lunar Bulwark flaring as she holds. The Elder’s lower arms claw and lash for every seam they can find.
“Barrier!” I bark.
Gold flashes into place as Perri throws Light Barrier over Raka’s right shoulder, a heartbeat before one of the standards slips the flank and a thorn-arm punches for the gap beneath her shield. The blow glances wide, scraping sparks and fire across the barrier instead of flesh.
“There you are,” Raka growls, the pressure easing just enough to give her room to answer.
Then she surges forward and drives Savage across one of the Elder’s hanging vine-arms, her axe biting halfway through in a wet burst of sap, splinters, and shredded bark. The creature shrieks, dry and furious, and rips backward hard enough to tear the wounded limb free.
The Elder does not care.
Its Regeneration is already working.
Green-black sap pulses through the torn wood as it lashes all three free arms at once, trying to turn the line into chaos. That is what Bushmen do when you give them room. They do not duel. They overwhelm. They stack pressure until something panics, and then they tear the panic apart.
We do not give it panic.
We give it timing.
“Left arm!” I bark.
Stormcast drives in. Lightning Smite races white-blue down the shaft and detonates at the point in a crack of stormfire. The Elder twists just enough to keep the strike out of its throat, but not enough to save the bark plate across its upper ribs.
It opens.
Kit is already moving.
She uses the deadfall like a stair, one foot on a root, one on a trunk, then blurs out of sight in Echo Step, reappearing on the Elder’s blind side just above the split in its bark plate.
Perri catches the counter-lash before it lands, throwing Light Barrier between them in a flash of gold that kicks the thorn-arm high.
That is all Kit needs.
She drives both daggers in under the broken bark, and Veilstrike erupts in violet-white soulfire, tearing through the Elder’s core from the inside out. The thing convulses, every extra limb snapping wide in a final, ugly bloom.
Then it crashes.
The ground shakes when it hits.
Raka is already turning on the two standards, Savage still heavy in her shoulders as my Arc Lightning burns between them, blue-white force snapping from bark-hide to bark-hide and leaving both of them staggering. Kit dances through the cleanup a heartbeat later, all flashing blades, sap-slick bark, and entirely too much smirk, finishing them before either can remember how to be a problem.
Behind us, Perri drops Sacred Flame onto the Elder’s ruined chest one time, then another, making absolutely sure its Regeneration doesn’t decide to get cute.
Then it’s over.
Bushmen down. Us breathing hard, slick with sap, bruised, dirty, and still standing.
Our pull completed successfully.
Plus one.
The HUD blooms twice in quick succession.
[Kit — Level 19]
[Raka — Level 19]
Kit crouches beside the downed Bushman, breathing hard, one hand braced on her knee, a satisfied smirk curling at her mouth. Raka tears her axe free from the severed vine-arm and plants a boot against the corpse like she wants the whole forest to know who won.
Ed stalks up behind and then comes to a statuesque halt.
The bond surges warm and sharp.
Kit looks up first, grinning through sweat and sap. “That one counts extra.”
Raka snorts. “It better.”
I laugh, still breathing hard. “You two done posing?”
“Never,” Kit says, rising in one smooth motion, all easy confidence and curves.
Raka rolls one shoulder, shield still hanging off the other arm. “Nineteen says we can pose if we want to.”
Perri beams at both of them.
I smirk.
Honestly?
Fair.
Another week passes in hard hunting and honest work.
By then, the outskirts and deeper parts of Bushman Forest no longer feel like borrowed ground. We know where the roots catch boots, where the deadfall narrows the approach, where thorn-vines like to hide just beneath the leaf rot and wait for ankles. We work for every bit of progress, but we make it. Coin adds up. Levels climb. The line gets tighter. The four of us, plus Ed haunting the edges of it all, start to move like we’re the dangerous ones in this zone.
We still camp more than I’d like.
Nobody says it out loud, but all of us miss the apartment. Miss walls. Miss a door that closes. Miss the Feisty Dwarf and the kind of food that doesn’t taste faintly of smoke, iron, and necessity. I even miss the Half-Drunken Dwarven Bard and his questionable relationship with tempo.
So when the Witty Bard wanders over from one of the other camps one night, lute in hand and grin already halfway to trouble, I wave her in.
She props one boot on a fallen log and lifts the bottle I toss her like a queen receiving tribute. “For the record,” she says, giving it an approving weigh, “this is exactly the kind of diplomacy I respect.”
Kit snorts.
Raka grunts something approving around a mouthful of roasted meat.
Perri smiles into her cup and tucks her cloak a little tighter around herself, cheeks already pink from the fire and the cider.
The Witty Bard is actually good. Better than good. Her fingers dance across the strings with easy confidence, and the songs she trades us for honeyed wine are the kind that know exactly what campfires are for. One is rude. One is old. Then she leans into “Bring Him Home Warm,” her rich, feminine voice turning the night soft around the edges. It sounds like it crawled out of some mountain hall where grief and drinking learned to share a bench. By the second chorus, even Raka is humming under her breath.
For a little while, the forest feels farther away.
For a little while, the cold does too.
Bring Him Home Warm
A dwarf lass likes a broad chest near,
A warm cot, ale, and flame,
A hunter back from the black-root dark
With sap and blood the same.
And if his shield is cracked to hell
And his boots are split in two,
He’s twice as fine by firelight still
If he staggers home to you.
So drink, my loves, and laugh tonight,
Let hard hands find their rest,
For steel may hold the tunnel line,
But heart will hold the rest.
Let deep things hiss and old roots claw,
Let night be cold and long,
We make a home of stubborn souls
And keep it lit with song.
A bold lad likes a wicked grin,
Soft hips and a knife held low,
A sweetheart mean enough to fight
And kind enough to know
That every fool who hunts below
Comes back with ghosts in tow,
So kiss him first and feed him hot
Before you let him go.
So drink, my loves, and laugh tonight,
Let hard hands find their rest,
For steel may hold the tunnel line,
But heart will hold the rest.
Let deep things hiss and old roots claw,
Let night be cold and long,
We make a home of stubborn souls
And keep it lit with song.
By the time she wanders back to her own camp, one bottle lighter, a second tucked under her arm, and a smile wider, our fire has burned low and the night has gone soft around the edges.
Kit settles onto the log beside me without asking.
Her shoulder brushes mine first. Then her thigh. Then she leans in fully, relaxed and warm in a way she only gets when she feels safe enough not to perform it.
Inside the tent, Raka is stretched on her bedroll with one arm behind her head, half-dozing. Perri has already curled in under her blankets, though her ears are still turned toward us, listening.
I stare into the coals for a moment before I speak, thoughtful.
“We’re close.”
Kit does not ask what I mean.
She already knows.
“I’m level twenty, you and Raka aren't far behind ,” I say quietly. “Perri’s almost nineteen. We can skirt the outer edge and the deeper woods just fine. We’re not scrambling anymore.” I look at her then. “I think we’re nearly ready to face her again.”
Kit is quiet for a breath.
Then she nods.
Her amber eyes catch the firelight, gold and steady. “We are.”
I let out a slow breath I didn’t realize I was holding.
She tilts her head, studying me the way she does when she thinks I’m pretending to be made of sterner material than I actually am.
“We’ve come a long way,” she says. “Perri’s stronger. Raka’s meaner. You’re...” Her mouth curves. “Still impossible.”
“Glad that survived.”
“It was never in danger.”
Her fingers drift over the vine tattoos on her arm, glowing faintly where the firelight kisses them. For a moment, her voice drops softer.
“But we are stronger. All of us. We’re not walking into her den half-built this time.”
“No,” I say. “We’re not.” Said hard enough to even convince myself.
She leans in then, just enough that her forehead brushes my shoulder for a heartbeat.
A small thing.
A big thing.
I slide my arm around her waist and pull her in properly. She fits there the way she always has, like trouble, comfort, and sharp edges all learned how to share one shape. The cold night air keeps moving beyond the fire, but in here, in this little pocket of orange light and sleeping bedrolls and crackling wood, the world narrows to something manageable.
“Our family’s never been stronger,” I murmur.
Kit glances up at me, eyes warm and unreadable in that way that usually means she has already understood three things I’m still catching up to.
“It’s nice,” I admit, quieter now, “feeling you close like this.”
That gets the smallest real smile out of her.
Not the sly one.
Not the sharp one.
The real one.
I look past her for a second. Raka, big and steady, one hand still resting near her axe even half-asleep. Perri, curled small but not fragile, cocooned in blankets and trust. Then I look back at Kit.
“You’re amazing, Kit. You know that?”
She gives me a look that would be insufferably smug if it were covering anything less vulnerable.
Her hand comes up and traces the line of my jaw with the backs of her fingers, light as breath.
I lean in and kiss her.
Warm and certain and lingering enough to remind both of us that all the things we keep fighting for have shape. Her fingers curl against my chest.
“Dangerous thing to tell me, Master,” she murmurs.
Something tightens in me then. Something deeper than want and harder to name. I hold her gaze and hear myself say it before I can decide whether I should.
“Kit... just for a moment. Call me Vincent.”
The bond pulls strangely around the words, not resisting, not quite. Just there. Warm. Aware. Waiting.
For a heartbeat, she only looks at me.
Then she smiles, small and unreadable, and the hand at my jaw stills.
“Yes, Vincent.”
It hits harder than it should.
Softly said. Easily said.
And I cannot tell if she gave it to me because I asked... or because, for one quiet second, she wanted to.