Chapter 84: Betrayal
Serena stood behind the counter, one elbow resting against the worn, scarred wood, her cheek propped against her palm as her gaze drifted absently across the open stretch of the tent, past the benches lined along the far corners, her thoughts elsewhere entirely.
*I haven't seen those two in a few days now,* she thought, absently tracing a small scratch in the counter with her thumb. *I wonder if James is already gone. Did Tyler go with him?* The thought lingered longer than she expected it to. *Now that I think about it, I still don't actually know what those two are to each other.*
At the edge of her vision, movement pulled her attention toward the entrance, and she turned her head fully toward it. Her eyebrows lifted slightly at what she found there.
Tyler stepped through the tent flap, and she noticed immediately that he wasn't wearing the ill-fitting clothes she remembered from before. Instead he had on something simpler, plainer, clothes that actually sat well on his frame instead of hanging loose the way his old ones had, giving him an entirely different presence than the one she remembered.
"Hey, Tyler," she said, a smile spreading easily across her face.
"Hi," he said, the same warmth returning it.
"How have you been? Did you enjoy the festival? I heard there were a ton of people there."
"Um, yeah. I... well. Kinda." His answer came slower than she expected, trailing off in a way that made her tilt her head slightly.
"What? What happened?"
"It's a long story." He shifted his weight, glancing past her toward the drawer behind the counter before bringing his eyes back to hers. "What about you? How were you? Did you get to celebrate at all?"
"Uh... no, actually." She straightened slightly and let her hand drop from her cheek.
"Why not?"
"Even during the festival, I still have to work. Not every hunter gets to celebrate, you know." She said it lightly, but there was a faint edge of resignation buried underneath it.
"Oh. That's a bummer."
"Yeah." She shrugged, the motion small and practiced, like she had shrugged the same feeling off many times before. "But I'm not that interested in it anyway. I don't really have people to spend it with, so I don't feel like I'm missing much."
"You don't have people to spend it with? What about friends? Family?"
"Well, I don't have a lot of friends." Her eyes drifted briefly to the side, somewhere past his shoulder. "And family's a whole different situation."
A short silence stretched out between them after that, neither of them quite reaching to fill it, the noise of the tent around them, the shuffle of other hunters, the low murmur of conversation near the entrance, filling the space where words should have been.
"Anyway," Serena said, clearing it away with a slight straightening of her posture. "You're here for a quest, right?"
"Yeah. Absolutely. Can you show me what's available right now?"
"Of course." She crouched slightly and pulled the drawer beneath the counter open, drawing out a thick stack of flyers bound loosely at the corner, the edges worn soft from handling, and set them down in front of him with a light thud.
Tyler pulled the stack toward himself and began sorting through them one at a time, his eyes scanning quickly down each page.
A mix of C-rank and D-rank listings passed beneath his gaze, requests for herbs, for hexhorn hides, several for crimson wolf pelts stacked near the bottom. He slowed on those, his thumb pausing against the edge of the page as he studied them.
*I already have these materials sitting in my inventory. Could I just complete these right now?* He flipped to the next one, and the one after that.
*I'd get the rewards, and the system would probably hand me more recipes on top of it.* He exhaled quietly through his nose, his eyes narrowing slightly at the thought. *Damn it, I haven't even crafted through most of the recipes I already have. This would just be piling more onto that stack.* He paused, considering it a moment longer.
*Still... not a bad idea. I can pull these back up later and go through them properly. Right now I need to focus on finding something worth taking.*
"So," Serena said, glancing up from the drawer as she closed it, "did James leave yet?"
Tyler's hands stilled over the flyers and he looked up at her, something shifting behind his eyes. "Yeah. This morning."
"Where'd he go?"
His gaze dropped back down to the papers in his hands, his fingers idly straightening their edges as his expression settled into something quieter, more guarded. "He didn't tell me."
"Huh? Why not?" She leaned forward slightly, resting both forearms against the counter now.
"I don't know. I think he wanted a real fresh start. In every sense of it." He said it evenly, though something underneath the words suggested he had already turned the thought over more than once.
"What? The selfish old man, couldn't even tell us where he was going." Serena let out a short breath of a laugh, shaking her head as she pushed off the counter. "Somehow, I'm not surprised."
Tyler huffed a quiet laugh of his own, his eyes lifting to meet hers for a moment before dropping back to the flyers spread out between them.
"What makes you say that?" he asked, looking up at her, the flyers still fanned out beneath his fingers.
"You know, James has always had this way of being selfish and selfless at the same time." Serena's gaze drifted somewhere past his shoulder, unfocused, the way people look when they're seeing a memory instead of the room in front of them.
"You think he's being selfish, and then once it actually makes sense, you realize he was trying to help all along." She paused, her fingers tracing an idle line along the edge of the counter. "Who knows, maybe there's a real reason he didn't tell us."
"Yeah," Tyler said, already flipping to the next page, his eyes moving quickly down the columns of listed materials and rewards.
His hand stilled when he reached a D-rank flyer requesting three Gloomfang hides, the parchment slightly softer at the edges than the others, worn from handling. "I'll take this one," he said, tapping it once against the counter.
"All right." She reached beneath the counter and slid a quill toward him, the feather worn nearly smooth at the tip from use.
Tyler took it and signed his name across the bottom of the page, the nib scratching faintly against the paper. "All right, I'm off."
"Be careful out there," Serena said, and something in her voice carried more weight than the words themselves.
"I will." He turned and pushed through the tent flap, the fabric brushing cool against his shoulder as he stepped out into the open morning air.
*I think I already have some Gloomfang hides sitting in my inventory,* he thought, his boots finding the packed dirt path leading toward the treeline in the distance. *If I get into their territory, it'll probably be the same as the Crimson Alpha, surrounded by the whole pack the moment I set foot in there.*
As he crossed the open ground near the base, he caught the weight of eyes on him before he saw them, a few hunters glancing over from where they stood sharpening blades or checking straps, some outright turning to stare.
He clenched his teeth and hissed a quiet breath through them, the heat of embarrassment rising fast up the back of his neck. *Right. I forgot the armor again. I thought I'd have gotten used to remembering that by now.*
"Yeah, man, that's the guy that put Gary in his place," one of them said, the words carrying just far enough to reach him on the breeze. "Haven't seen Gary since."
Tyler's stride nearly broke beneath him. He kept walking, though his pace slowed without him deciding to let it, the gravel crunching a little slower under each step.
*They're starring at me because of that?* The thought sat wrong in his chest, heavy and unfamiliar. He let his eyes drift sideways without turning his head fully, some of the hunters wore faint, knowing grins, a few shook their heads slowly in something close to pity, and others watched him with an expression closer to quiet admiration, like he had done something worth remembering.
He had nearly let himself forget what that fight had actually meant, what it might still cost him.
*I really had no idea he was part of a guild.* He reached the edge of the cleared ground where the base gave way to wilder grass, and stopped there, staring out at the dense wall of trees ahead of him. *But even if I'd known, would that have stopped me?*
He glanced both ways along the treeline, checking that no one was close enough to see. The leather cuirass materialized around his torso in a faint shimmer, settling into place with a snug.
A second later the red Tearra dagger formed in his open palm, the handle warm and solid against his skin, fitting into the curve of his grip like it had been shaped for it. *Not going to think about that right now. I have a mission to finish.*
He stepped past the last of the cleared grass and into the shadow of the trees, disappearing into the monster zone.
***
Meanwhile, deeper in, the twins walked several paces ahead of Bernardo, their laughter carrying easily through the trees, while Bernardo trailed behind with his jaw locked tight, his eyes fixed on their backs with a simmering, tightly held annoyance.
Nigel glanced back over his shoulder, a grin spreading slow across his face. "You said you fell?"
"Fell from where, a building?" Nathan added, laughing outright now, the sound sharp against the quiet of the trees around them.
"Yeah, right. Probably got his ass handed to him before he ran."
"No, I didn't," Bernardo snapped, the words coming out clipped and fast. "How the hell would I get beaten while my skill's active?"
Nigel stopped walking. Nathan stopped a half-beat after him, both of them turning fully around at once, and the suddenness of it caught Bernardo off guard enough that his own steps faltered beneath him.
"Wait." Nathan's eyes narrowed slightly. "Are you saying if it isn't a person hurting you, you actually get hurt?"
"Yeah." Nigel's eyes had gone distant, working through it. "If a person pushed you from a high enough vantage point, you could actually die from that?"
Bernardo stopped there, his heart picking up hard and fast against his ribs, his fists closing at his sides as he held their stares.
The question had come too quickly, too precisely aimed, and the mention of dying sat heavier in the air than he wanted it to let show.
Both twins were watching him now with a curiosity that had nothing casual left in it.
"You two need to knock it off. Why the hell would I tell you anything?" Bernardo said, forcing his way between them, his shoulders driving into both of theirs at once. "We need to finish this quest while we still have time. If we don't, she might get here before we've accomplished anything."
"All right, relax, we were just messing with you," Nathan said, and the two of them fell into step behind him without argument.
"But seriously though, do you really think she's going to come here?" Nigel asked.
"Yeah. She's an incredibly good assassin. It's said she can track anyone from anywhere in the world," Nathan answered.
"I know she's good, but from around the world? Really?" Mockery colored Nigel's voice. "Isn't that a bit much?"
"Maybe it's part of her skill. Who knows."
"Even if it is a skill, she'd have to be above S-rank for it to reach that far."
"Then she probably is."
"But is she really?" Nigel called ahead. "Hey!Bernardo."
Bernardo didn't answer.
"Bernardo. Hey!"
"What?" Bernardo turned, annoyance sharp in his voice.
"Is she really as good as they say?"
The question found something in him he didn't want touched. The memory surfaced before he could stop it, the helplessness of running from her, the pain that had torn through his hand as she took his fingers.
His own screaming going nowhere, swallowed by silence. He remembered her face while it happened. Not angry but pleased.
"I already told you that." He turned back around. "Plus, where the hell are we even going?"
"Isn't it obvious? We're headed toward the hexhorn hideout."
Bernardo stopped mid-step and turned his whole body toward them. "What?"
"You didn't know?" Nigel glanced at his brother. "Nathan, didn't you tell him about the quest?"
"He never asked," Nathan said.
"Why the hell would you pick that kind of quest?" Bernardo's jaw tightened. "Those things are fast. Hard to kill. We won't be able to outrun them."
"We?" Nigel repeated.
"Yeah, you won't be able to outrun them. Not us." He let the words sit a beat before finishing. "But you don't need to, do you?"
Bernardo opened his mouth and stopped, the words catching in his throat, and he swallowed instead.
"Exactly. If they try to kill you, they get hurt instead." Nigel said it, brushing past him without slowing. "So what's the big deal?"
*It doesn't work like that,* Bernardo thought, his teeth grinding together as the frustration built behind his ribs.
He fell in behind them anyway. Ahead of him, the twins traded a glance, and Nathan gave his brother a small, silent nod. Whatever they had already decided between themselves, it was already moving.
They kept walking until what felt like an hour and several minutes had passed.
"Damn it," Bernardo muttered. "How much farther?"
The twins exchanged a look, and concern had crept into it.
Something wasn't right. They should have run into hexhorns by now, but there was no trace of them anywhere in the forest around them. Whatever plan they had walked in with no longer applied.
"We're almost there," Nathan said, and beneath the words his mind worked fast. *Where the hell are they? We already entered their territory half an hour ago. We're already out. We have to make another plan. But how the hell do I tell him with this damn ass walking behind us?*
He glanced sideways at his brother. Nigel caught his eye for a beat and looked forward again without a word.
*He already knows,* Nathan thought. His brother's head tilted slightly to the side, and together they changed direction. Bernardo followed a few steps behind, his eyes moving over the unfamiliar terrain.
Then he saw both brothers draw their blades.
His heart lurched and his feet stopped moving on their own. Nigel glanced back at him. "We're close," he said. "Keep going."
All three of them went still at once as the sound reached them, a chorus of what sounded like dogs crying out, layered over each other, unmistakably more than one voice.
"What is that?" Bernardo said, his eyes darting toward the source. "Those aren't hexhorns."
"Probably just wolves fighting each other. Let's go this way." The brothers cut left, then straightened out and pushed forward, the new route carrying them a longer way around but toward the same noise all along, something neither of them needed to say aloud to agree on.
As they walked, the howling stopped, cutting off all at once and leaving the forest unnervingly quiet.
"It stopped," Bernardo said.
Nigel turned, activating his skill, Step. His whole body blurred forward, closing the distance in a single millisecond, his leg driving a kick straight at the center of Bernardo's chest, and the force redirected on impact, the exact weight of the strike turning back on Nigel himself in half a second, hurling his body backward off the ground as a strangled curse tore out of him and he tumbled hard across the forest floor, rolling past his brother and missing him by an inch.
What little force slipped through the reversal was enough to catch Bernardo off balance. His feet tangled beneath him and he hit the ground hard, the air driven from his lungs on impact.
Nathan was already moving toward him, closing the distance in a lunge, and Bernardo's hand shot for the dagger at his hip only for Nathan to catch his wrist first, his grip closing tight around it as his other hand drove straight into Bernardo's pocket. Bernardo's eyes went wide, and he threw his free hand at Nathan, clawing at his arm, his body thrashing against the weight pinning him down.
"Hey, what are you doing?" Bernardo gasped, confusion and panic bleeding through the words as he struggled.
Nathan's other hand drove straight into Bernardo's pocket. Bernardo's eyes went wide, and he threw his free hand at Nathan, clawing at his arm, fighting to pull him off even as he felt how little strength was left in the attempt.
Nathan's fingers closed around the coin pouch and pulled. The fabric gave all at once, tearing free with the pocket still attached to it.
"You fucking traitors!" Bernardo's voice cracked as he screamed it.
"This isn't personal." Nathan was already grinning, already pushing off him and rising. "Let's go!"
Nigel pulled himself up off the ground behind them, still gasping for breath, and forced his legs into a run after his brother, who was already pulling ahead.
Bernardo pushed himself up to follow and stopped. His cloak held him fast to the ground, pinned by a blade driven clean through the fabric and buried to the hilt in the earth beneath it. He stared at it, uncomprehending. He hadn't felt it happen. Hadn't seen it happen. There had been no moment in the chaos he could point to and say, that was when.
Before he could untangle any of it, a faint rustling reached him from the bushes, low and steady, drawing closer.
His heart slammed against his ribs. He knew It wasn't the twins they were long gone, sprinting the opposite direction.
This was something else. And this deep inside a monster zone, there was only one thing it could be.
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