The Curse of Arcadia

The next morning brought a strange, almost domestic normalcy to the camp — five people who'd met each other in the middle of a poison-and-scorpions crisis now sitting around a rebuilt fire eating whatever could be scrounged between two parties' worth of travel rations.

Eric looked considerably more like himself once a night's sleep had caught up with him, color back in his face, the dented plate finally set aside in favor of simpler clothes while it waited on repairs.

"I don't think I properly thanked you," he said, catching Kaelid's eye across the fire. "Yesterday was— I've fought a lot of things. Never quite that outnumbered."

"You held three of them alone before we even got there," Kaelid said. "That's not nothing."

"Barely," Eric admitted, though something in his posture straightened a little at the acknowledgment anyway.

Tatsuya, predictably, had already moved on to more pressing matters — namely, interrogating Aria about December's draw weight with the single-minded focus of a man who'd apparently decided weapons were the only acceptable small talk.

Ana sat a little apart from the noise, quiet and watchful in the way Kaelid was already starting to recognize as just how she processed things, and when her eyes met his across the fire he found himself, for the second time in as many days, forgetting exactly what he'd meant to say.

Get it together. She's just sitting there. People sit places. This is normal.

"You're staring," she said, not unkindly, one eyebrow raised.

"I'm staring," he agreed, because apparently today was a day for terrible decisions. "Sue me."

That earned him an actual laugh — short, surprised, like it had gotten past her before she could stop it — and something about pulling that out of her felt like its own small victory.

***

The day after passed quietly, Ana and Tatsuya both steadier by evening, the poison's last lingering effects finally working their way out of both systems. Kaelid caught himself finding excuses to end up near Ana more than once over the course of it — asking questions he didn't strictly need answered, lingering a beat longer than necessary whenever she talked — and told himself, unconvincingly, that it was just curiosity about the newest member of their temporary, expanding circle.

Just curiosity. Sure. Keep telling yourself that.

***

They found the tracks a few hours out from camp the next morning — wolf prints crossing lynx tracks, both fresh, both converging on the same stretch of forest like the two packs had learned to share range rather than fight over it.

"Mixed group," Aria said, crouched over the overlapping prints. "Never seen that before."

"Different diets, maybe. Different prey." Kaelid straightened, scanning the treeline. "Doesn't matter much either way. We just need three of the cat and whatever wolves come with them."

They found the pack in a clearing not far past the tracks — two wolves and three lynx, moving together with an easy, practiced coordination that suggested this wasn't a one-time overlap.

"Ready?" Kaelid asked, already easing Mercy loose in her sheath.

Aria drew instead of answering, and that was answer enough. December began pulling in everything cold within reach — snow lifting off the ground in fine, swirling threads, the air itself seeming to thin and sharpen around her, all of it condensing into a single, flawless shard of ice notched against the string.

First time she's actually used that thing. Let's see what it does.

One of the lynx broke from the pack toward her, faster than the others, clearly sensing the gathering cold as a threat worth silencing first — and never made it. The arrow left the bow without a sound, the string, the draw, the release all swallowed by [Silent] — and the first noise it made at all was the crack of impact, punching clean through its skull and out the other side before the beast had even finished its first stride.

The rest of the pack scattered and surged at once, the sudden violence sending them into motion rather than retreat.

Kaelid met the nearest wolf head-on, Mercy shifted heavy with [Density] to meet the force of its leap, driving it sideways into the snow rather than letting it close on him clean. The second lynx came in low from his blind side, and he caught it on the follow-through, [Density] shifting light again mid-swing to bring Mercy around fast enough to open its throat before it landed.

"Two!" Aria called, already nocking a normal arrow — [Absolute Zero] only worked once a day, and she'd already spent it — catching the third lynx mid-leap and driving it down hard.

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That left the second wolf, bigger than its packmate, circling wide rather than charging in blind. It went for Aria instead of him, closing fast while her bow was still drawn on something else, and Kaelid was moving before he'd fully registered the danger — closing the gap at a dead sprint, driving Death into its flank hard enough to stagger it off its charge entirely.

The [Rot] took hold almost instantly, blackening spreading fast through fur and muscle both. The wolf shrieked, twisting to snap at the wound, giving Kaelid the half-second he needed to finish it clean.

Silence settled over the clearing. Five bodies in the snow, all of it over faster than he'd expected once it actually started.

"That's everything we needed," Aria said, already crouched over the nearest lynx, working a core loose. "Three lynx, two wolves."

"Lynx cores are mine — should be everything I need for whatever John ends up building me next." Kaelid knelt beside the second wolf, working its core free with more care than the fight had allowed for. "Wolf cores are yours. That's your last two toward armor, once we're back and he's got time for it."

Aria glanced up at that, something considering in her expression. "Didn't realize we were already planning that far ahead."

"May as well. December's covered. Taxes is covered. Only fair your armor's next in line."

She didn't argue, tucking both wolf cores away with the same careful attention she'd given everything else today.

They made it back to camp with the light just starting to fail, cores banked, both of them worn through in the satisfied way that came from a job that had actually gone according to plan for once.

***

Eric, Ana, and Tatsuya were already gathered around a freshly built fire — steadier now, all traces of the poison gone, looking more like themselves than they had at any point since the scorpion fight.

The conversation drifted, as it inevitably would after a few days of circling it, toward the question neither party had said out loud yet.

Should they actually do this? Combine into one?

It made sense on paper. Two half-formed parties, each missing pieces the other happened to have — a tank, a healer, two swordsmen, an archer. Together, there was very little in this forest, or the next one, that the five of them wouldn't be able to handle. And more than that: fighting stronger monsters as a real party meant a real shot at pushing toward a feat worth reaching Enlightenment for, sooner rather than later.

Kaelid had conditions, though. He always did.

"You'd need to move to Avalon," he said, once the idea was properly on the table. "Or at least base out of there most of the time." He laid out his training regimen for them — the daily grind under Captain Yami, the thousands of sword swings, the hours of sparring that left him face-down in the dirt more often than not.

Tatsuya's whole face lit up somewhere in the middle of that description, clearly already picturing himself in the thick of it.

Once the terms were on the table, Kaelid asked the question that actually mattered to him.

"What's your goal? Actually think about it before you answer."

"To master the blade," Tatsuya said, without a flicker of hesitation.

"To become stronger," Eric said, flat and simple.

Ana took longer. When she finally spoke, it wasn't what any of them expected.

"I want to explore past the Death Mountains."

Kaelid and Aria both went quiet at that. Eric and Tatsuya just shrugged, unbothered — apparently they'd heard some version of this before.

"What about you two?" Ana asked, turning the question back around before anyone could press her further.

Kaelid didn't need to think about his answer. He'd known it since before he left his village.

"To make a lot of money, and reach Enlightenment." He said it with a grin that probably looked as stupid as it felt.

Everyone but Aria looked at him like he'd said something faintly ridiculous.

Aria didn't hesitate either. "I want to kill the Leviathan, Aries."

That killed the conversation dead for a moment.

"You mean the Abyssal-rank Leviathan that destroyed Cyprus?" Tatsuya asked eventually, quiet.

Aria nodded, eyes steady on the middle distance. "Cyprus was my home. I intend to get my revenge on that thing. Eventually."

Nobody said anything else for a while after that. It wasn't the kind of goal you followed up with a joke.

***

By the time the fire had gone fully cold and the decision had settled into something real, all five of them had agreed: one party, working together, toward Avalon.

The logistics took longer than the decision itself. Eric's group needed to head back to Fort Raichas first — say their goodbyes, wrap up whatever ties they had there, pack up a life that was about to relocate somewhere new. Ten days or so, Eric figured, before they'd actually be ready to make the journey north and join Kaelid and Aria for real.

"We'll head back to Avalon first," Kaelid told Eric before they split the next morning. "Get settled, figure out housing. Come find us when you're ready."

Eric shook his hand on it, grateful in a way that made Kaelid a little uncomfortable, if he was honest with himself — he wasn't used to being thanked for things yet.

The two groups parted ways not long after, Kaelid and Aria turning back toward the fortress city they already called home, Eric's party heading the opposite direction to close out whatever they were leaving behind.

Ten days, Kaelid thought, glancing once toward Ana before the trees swallowed the rest of her party from view. Guess I've got ten days to figure out why I can't stop thinking about her.

It was well past dark by the time he and Aria reached Avalon's north gate again. He told her to meet him at the guild in the morning — they'd collect their reward for the goblin job, sell off what cores they could, and start figuring out what a five-person household in Avalon was actually going to look like.

A real party, he thought, walking the last stretch to the inn alone under a sky gone fully dark. Five goals. Five completely different reasons to keep getting stronger. Somehow I don't think that's going to be a problem.

He was, for once, almost right.