The Deceiver's Path - Chapter 132 - The Price of Warmth (Patreon)

Piper shivered uncontrollably next to a tangle of fallen trees her group had stumbled across, trying to focus her thoughts. Her arms felt leaden, and her teeth were chattering so badly that they ached. She tried to form the image of a shelter in her mind, but another shiver wracked her body and made her lose concentration.

Inhaling deeply, she pushed down the growing discomfort and tried to picture a shelter again. For some reason, the only thing that came to mind was a yurt, a circular, portable tent-like structure used by some people in Central Asia. She must have seen it on one of her dad’s boring history programs, because otherwise she had no idea how it had ended up in her brain.

Closing her eyes, she once again focused on summoning a tent. She’d already dismissed her summons after dragging the half-frozen aspirants from the beast’s hairy back. But beforehand, she’d sent the illusory rhino tromping off deeper into the forest. Even though she was on the verge of freezing to death, she still wanted to keep the true nature of her spells secret.

This time, her shivering passed long enough for her to properly visualize the shelter as she cast [Shifting Veil]. Amidst the blowing snow, a white tent with canvas walls appeared. She followed up her spell with [Flesh Weaver].

For a second, she worried that her new spell would be limited to animals or monster illusions. However, she didn’t encounter any resistance as she finished casting.

To be sure, she took an unsteady step forward and touched the side of the tent. The soft canvas bowed under her fingers, proving that her spell had indeed succeeded. Without waiting, she stumbled over to the door and threw it open.

Without any needed encouragement, the others immediately piled into the tent. Zenos carried Ophelia, who mumbled under her breath, while Marco dragged Thalia in behind him. Once the others were inside, Piper tottered into the tent and collapsed against the side.

Piper’s shivers immediately lessened once she was removed from the cutting wind. While the inside of the tent wasn’t much warmer, at least she felt slightly less frozen. And for now, that was enough for her.

No one spoke for a long time, as they all sat there completely exhausted by their ordeal. The deadfall with the mass of uprooted trees should provide protection from the wind on one side. She hoped that would be enough to prevent the tent from blowing away.

Zenos wiped a layer of slush from his face. When he spoke, his words were slurred. “We… need… to… make a fire.”

Piper strained to squeeze her fingers together, becoming more worried by the second about the continued numbness. At least the tips of her fingers hadn’t started to blacken yet. But she knew frostbite couldn’t be far off.

“Where’s that idiot, Lysander?” Piper asked. “Shouldn’t he be rescuing us right about now? What’s the point of a guide if they don’t bother watching over you?”

Zenos simply shrugged in response. And no one else in the tent appeared willing—or able—to answer her question.

Leaning her head against the wall of the tent, she gazed up at the opening in the middle of the ceiling. She knew that was where the smoke from a fire was supposed to escape from. However, she had no idea how to light a fire.

Her trick with a magnifying glass wouldn’t work when the sun was blotted out by churning clouds. And she had no other means of starting a fire.

She had no idea how to save everyone.

Shuffling over to Marco, she touched him lightly on the arm. His frozen cloak cracked as he shifted slightly.

The man peered up at her with dark circles under his eyes. “Yes?”

“Do you have a way to start a fire?”

Marco shook his head miserably before his head drooped forward.

She pressed her lips together and looked at Ophelia. There was a way to heat up the room, but she dreaded doing it. Still, it was the only way she could think of to keep everyone alive through the night.

Piper cast [Shifting Veil] to create an exact duplicate of herself leaning against the tent. Then she cast [Wraithskin]. After she was hidden from sight, she moved to the center of the tent. There she used [Shifting Veil] again to create an illusion of an empty space and then let her [Wraithskin] fall away. The spell would break the moment she enacted her plans, anyway.

Reaching down, she grabbed her knife gifted to her by Alfred so long ago. She pulled it free from the sheath on her belt before lifting it in front of her. For a moment, she held it there, her face twisting up into a grimace. Then she drove the blade deep into her gut.

The moment she did, pain blossomed in her stomach. She fought down a gasp of pain as she twisted the blade. A river of blood poured down her dress, pooling on the floor at her feet. This was followed up by a sensation of wooziness that nearly dropped her to her knees.

Piper had to act before she passed out. She activated [Demonic Blood] and her blood immediately glowed like superheated liquid metal. As her wound closed, it began to radiate intense heat into the enclosed structure.

The yurt became noticeably warmer as the temperature probably increased by a couple of degrees. She repeated the process on her thigh, allowing some blood to drain out, before activating [Demonic Blood] a second time. Her face twisted with pain as the burning transformed into a stinging sensation, as if she was being swarmed by angry bees.

Soon, the inside of the yurt almost felt balmy. She sank to the ground as a sensation of exhaustion washed over her. She recast [Wraithskin] and crawled back to the illusion of herself reclining against the wall.

As she was about to drop her stealth spell, she noticed that her dress was smoking. She stared at her singed clothing and began to giggle like a maniac. The entire time, she’d had the perfect way to start a fire right in front of her—all she had to do was hold kindling against her superheated blood and it would ignite.

Thankfully, no one had seen her stab herself like a lunatic while there was another option staring her in the face. And she would take what she’d done to her grave. But at least she’d defrosted a bit and felt strong enough to seek out some firewood.

To cover up the blood and damage to her dress, she cast [Shifting Veil] to replace it with an undamaged version. Then she dropped [Wraithskin] as she noted the others perking up. Zenos peered in her direction, his eyes narrowing slightly, but he didn’t ask any questions. Most likely, he didn’t have the strength to talk.

More than anything, Piper wanted to drift off to sleep. However, she was probably the only one strong enough to brave the snowstorm to find firewood. Another reason she’d chosen the deadfall for their camp was that it should provide some deadwood for her to gather.

Piper dragged herself upright and stumbled toward the door. Once this was over, she planned to sleep for a week. But right now, she didn’t have that luxury. She needed to get a fire going, unless she wanted to keep stabbing herself throughout the upcoming night.

She exited the tent into a raging storm. In the distance, lightning flashed among the clouds. She blundered through snow up to her chest until she reached the protruding shape of a fallen tree.

Once there, she broke off the limbs with her bare hands, thankful for her high Strength stat. With her arms full of wood, she retraced her steps through the blowing snow. Thankfully, she hadn’t lost sight of the yurt through the white curtain descending over the valley. Though in the future, she really needed to make the tent a different color so it was easier to find.

Why the heck did I choose a white tent in a snowstorm?

Pushing her way back inside, she dumped the wood in the middle of the tent. Then she retraced her steps to gather more deadwood. She repeated this process five times until half the tent was covered in branches and logs. Now she just had to hope it would be dry enough to light.

She once again created an illusory double of herself while she moved to the center of the tent. There she pulled up her dress and sliced her dagger cleanly across her thigh. Something felt vaguely wrong about doing this to herself, but she was in a survival situation and had no other options. This was the only way to ensure the others made it out of here alive.

Piper had selected a handful of bark and twigs as her tinder. She pressed them against her thigh and waited until they were coated with her blood. Then she activated her demonic skill. The burning sensation spread across her flesh, and the tinder began to smoke.

She gently brought the kindling to her mouth in cupped hands and blew on it. Within a few seconds, it started to smoke. A single flame ignited among the leaves, and she carefully lowered the pile of sticks at her feet.

As her wound healed shut, she continued to nurture the tiny flame until it had spread to the rest of the tinder. Slowly, the branches she’d gathered began to smoke before igniting. She allowed her illusory self to merge with herself and then cancelled the spell.

Soon, a cheerful fire was blazing in the center of the tent, sending smoke swirling toward the roof hole. She continued to crouch by the fire, feeding in more sticks until it was ready for a log. Only once three logs were burning did she return to her spot near the edge of the tent.

Shaking off her cloak, she laid it out near the fire. Next, she removed her boots and placed them beside her cloak. They had become almost completely frozen on their hike down the mountain and through the forest. Finally, her socks joined her boots, allowing her to wiggle her numb toes.

Her clothing was frozen as well, but she wasn’t about to strip in a tent full of strangers. She would just have to let it thaw from the heat. With the rising temperature in the shelter, she doubted it would take very long.

Piper inspected the wood and counted the number of logs she’d gathered. With a little luck, it should last until morning. If the storm hadn’t lifted by then, they’d have bigger problems than keeping the fire going. The mountain pass exiting the valley might get snowed in, meaning they’d be stuck here until a thaw.

And in the mountains, thaws sometimes took weeks or even months to arrive.

“Great exercise, Lysander,” she muttered to herself. “Dump us into a valley to freeze to death. What exactly is this supposed to teach us?”

Ophelia shifted slightly. “What are you mumbling about?”

Piper hurried over to her friend, the tent too low to allow her to stand up fully. She reached down to touch the young woman’s cheek. While her skin still felt cool, at least it didn’t feel frozen anymore. There were a handful of black patches on the girl’s face, which indicated frostbite. But the healer back at the villa should be able to reverse the effects without any issue.

“How do you feel?”

“Cold,” Ophelia whispered. “Really cold.”

Piper laughed, some of her tension draining out. “That’s to be expected in a mountain snowstorm.”

“Remind me to kick Lysander’s ass tomorrow,” Ophelia murmured.

“No way.” She shook her head. “I get to do it first.”

“Whatever,” Ophelia grinned weakly. “A spellcaster can’t beat a warrior.”

“Just watch me.”

Zenos listened to them without saying a word.

The fact that he wasn’t talking worried her slightly. Had she somehow revealed her true nature by starting the fire? Or was the young man in the grips of hypothermia and unable to respond? She really needed to convince the guild to replace him in her group. She was starting to become paranoid around him.

The crunching sound of snow outside the tent made her freeze. She groped for the dagger on her belt and ripped it from its sheath. It was among the least dangerous weapon she possessed, but it was the only one available to her at the moment.

The tent flap swung open to reveal Lysander's face. “There you are, Gravebait,” he said. “I thought we were never going to catch up with you.”

Piper stared incredulously at the man. “That’s it?” she cried out. “We all almost froze to death, and that’s what you say?”

The warrior shrugged his shoulders. “What do you expect me to say? You’re the ones who screwed up.”

“You left us in a blizzard!” she replied, her voice rising. “We could have died out there.”

Lysander stooped to enter the tent and moved over to the fire. He then held out his hands to warm them. “What’s the first thing we teach you about survival when a rescue is likely?”

Piper pressed her lips together as she tried to remember her classes. “Always stay put,” she said slowly. “But we would have been snowed in if we had done that!”

“We had scouts mark your locations on your first day here,” Lysander continued, rubbing his hands together. “If you had stayed in your shelter, we would have pulled you out this afternoon. I had a feeling that you’d be fine, so we prioritized rescuing the others first. However, when we arrived at your camp, you were nowhere to be found. It’s just lucky that you left a trail wide enough for a blind mountain ape to follow.”

“You knew about our camp?” she replied, stunned by his words. In hindsight, she should have held out longer against the others. They were in a far better position with their cave than they were here. If she hadn’t been able to summon the tent, they would almost certainly have died.

Lysander furrowed his brow and poked the roof above his head. “Another one of your illusions? Sort of like the troll? Yes, I know about the fight with Joanna. It’s honestly impressive how easily you and your sister make powerful enemies.”

Piper raised her chin defiantly. “She started the fight. I would have gladly shared our camp with her group.”

Lysander stared at her for a moment before nodding. “Not listening aside, I’m growing more impressed by the day. At this rate, I might ask you to join my group when you finally become a wayfarer.”

Piper ignored the faint praise and struggled to her feet. “What are we supposed to do now?”

“We'll head back to the villa,” he said. “I have a weather mage waiting outside. He should make the journey back tolerable. Unless you want to stay here for the rest of the week?”

Piper shook her head.

“Then let’s get moving. This storm is unnatural, and I sense a dark presence behind it. The sooner we return to the safety of the villa, the better.”