Hope you enjoy today's chapter :)

Also, thanks for the idea one of you had about Scirocco being annoyed at his failure to pierce the emissary :D

Cheers,

Plum

30 – Closing the Distance

“Do you really think that’s a good idea?” Denise asked, looking pointedly over Lucy’s shoulder to where Vince lay on his makeshift cot.

“We need to know what’s coming next—what we’re up against,” Lucy replied. “I know it seems reckless, but I’m starting to understand Andy’s point of view, I think. I want to move quickly and I want to be able to sneak close. I feel like…” She trailed off, not wanting to say something rude, but Denise wasn’t dumb.

“We’d slow you down.” She shook her head. “I know why you feel that way, but I’m going to disagree. I think I should go with you. I have spells that will help us get close—spells that can let me see farther than you can. Maybe we’ll have to travel a little more slowly than you would if you were alone, but I’m not in bad shape. I can jog for a long time, and—”

Lucy didn’t try to hide her relief as she interrupted, “Actually, Denise, I’d feel a lot better if you were with me. I just didn’t want to say that.”

The older woman smiled and gave her a quick nod. “That’s the right attitude. I was afraid you’d fight me about it.” She turned and looked at Vince again, then let her eyes drift over to Madi, who was mixing another healing salve at a workbench the Dondalli had set up for her. “We just need to decide what to do with the others. Do you think they should head home?”

Lucy chewed her bottom lip as she thought it over. After a minute, she said, “Why don’t we let them decide? Madi told me she wants to stay awhile to make sure her saplings are doing okay, but the Militia members are ready to go anytime.”

“If Madi’s staying, do you think we could talk Janice and Benny into waiting for her? I’d hate to think she might try the journey alone.”

Lucy nodded. “Good idea. Plus, Torfal and Ria want to put together a delegation to visit the mesa soon.”

“Which is why I think your idea is a good one. We can’t have a hostile bunch of wooden assholes between our communities. We need to figure the Gavax out.” She nudged Lucy’s shoulder. “Why don’t you go and talk to Vince? I’ll talk to Janice.”

Grimacing, Lucy nodded. “Fine.”

With a chuckle, Denise turned and walked toward the gate where the two dragonkin siblings were hanging out. Lucy, hands in pockets, meandered reluctantly toward Vince. It wasn’t that he’d been a jerk lately, but she was fairly certain he was going to want to argue with her about whether she and Denise should go on their little reconnaissance mission alone.

“Hey there, Vince,” she said, smiling as gently as she could. “Feeling any better?”

He was lying on his back, eyes closed as he massaged his temples. When Lucy spoke, he opened his eyes and smiled wanly. “Oh, much better, I think. A little woozy still.”

Lucy nodded and knelt beside his cot. “I’m glad. During the last part of the battle, when I couldn’t see you anywhere, I got pretty worried.”

He snorted softly. “I’ll bet.”

“I mean it, Vince. Sure, you can be a little prickly, and you tend to argue with Andy more often than not, but you’ve never done anything that would make me want to see you get hurt.” He didn’t say anything, but she could see the wheels turning behind his eyes. After a moment, she added, “Besides, you showed some guts standing up against that army with the rest of us.”

“Heh.” He resumed rubbing his temples. “You think so?”

“Come on. We all did. I bet you got some levels, too.”

“Yep—the System tried to give me a new class, too, but I’m not falling for it. I’m sticking to what I’m good at.”

Lucy nodded, inwardly cringing at the idea that he was a more powerful Civic Advocate now, whatever that meant. “Well, that’s kind of what I want to talk to you about. I think we need to get an idea of what we’re up against with the Gavax.”

Vince’s eyes widened and he blanched slightly. “You want me to try diplomacy with them?”

Lucy laughed, shaking her head. “No. I mean what I’m good at—scouting things out. I’m going to try to get eyes on their settlement, and I’m going to bring Denise with me. What about you? Will you stay here for a while, or do you want to head back to the mesa with the Militia members?”

To her surprise, Vince didn’t try to argue at all. He closed his eyes, though, contemplating for a few seconds before he said, “I think, if they’ll wait for me, I’d like to rest for the day and then head back in the morning.”

Lucy arched an eyebrow. “That’s it?”

Vince narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, um, nothing. I just thought you might have more to say.”

He shook his head. “I just got buried under a pile of corpses. When I felt my head get cracked by that thing’s hammer or mace or whatever, I thought I was dead. I’m not in the mood to argue. If you want to go and get yourself killed, that’s your business, but I’m going back to the settlement where I’ll focus on what I’m good at—advocating for our people!”

Lucy nodded and used his cot to push herself back to her feet. “Fair enough, Vince. Anyway, don’t push yourself; I’m sure the Militia kids will be willing to wait for you to recover.”

“Tomorrow,” he said, and then he closed his eyes again. Lucy got the feeling he was done talking, and she was fine with that; she’d done her duty, and she’d been nice about it, too. When she turned away, she saw Madi looking her way, so she walked over to the Druid—or, as the Dondalli were calling her, Seed Mother.

“He doing better?” Madi asked as she approached.

Lucy shrugged. “In a way. I thought he was chilling out, but it seems like he’s just waiting to get home before he doubles down on his…” She shook her head, sighing as she decided not to say something like troublemaking. “Anyway, his head’s feeling better.”

“I’m surprised he lived, to be honest,” Madi said. “Even Bea’s water had trouble bringing the swelling down.”

“Well, I guess we’re lucky we had some.”

“A lot of the Dondalli have Bea to thank for their lives today, though my healing is getting stronger—I still haven’t had time to really look at everything I gained from the levels.”

Lucy nodded. “We all gained a few, huh?”

Madi smiled, and it seemed to Lucy that she looked older…no, not older—more mature. “The System is like a force of nature; I don’t believe it loves any of us, but when it throws a disaster our way, it balances that with experience and levels.”

“Survival of the fittest. You’ve heard about what the Guides told Andy, right?”

“Ah, yeah. When I went on patrol with him, he talked a lot at the campfire.” Madi smiled, but it looked a little sad to Lucy. “Anyway, I’m looking forward to talking with him again.”

“How long do you think you’ll stay here? I was thinking that maybe when you head back to the mesa, you could guide Torfal and his delegation.”

Madi turned and regarded one of her nearby saplings. It still had a green trunk, but it was as big around as Lucy’s wrist and easily ten feet tall. “My trees are thriving. I’ll stay another day or two to ensure their roots are good and deep and to train some of the Dondalli on their care.” She looked back at Lucy, frowning slightly. “You’re not staying?”

“No.” Lucy pointed toward the northern edge of the settlement. “Denise and I are going to find the Gavax settlement and find out what we’re really dealing with. I can’t believe they’re all like those soldiers we killed—someone has to be calling the shots.”

“Are you leaving now?” Madi’s voice rose slightly, and suddenly she looked like a teenager again.

Smiling, Lucy held out her arms. “Yep. Be safe, okay?”

Madi was quick to accept the hug, and she squeezed Lucy tightly. “You too! Don’t do anything crazy.”

Twenty minutes later, sometime around noon, Denise and Lucy left the Dondalli settlement, traveling back down from the heights along the ravine where they’d first approached. Ria had been almost tearful as she wished Lucy well, but that wasn’t a big surprise; she’d been emotional ever since Torfal had left to retrieve Ganessa’s body. Lucy couldn’t blame her, though it seemed a little out of character for the Dondalli. For the most part, they were taking their losses in stride.

“Well, Lucy,” Denise said as they picked their way through the blood-stained ravine where they’d rained arrows and boulders down on the Gavax army, “I think that, overall, we did a good job here. We made friends, saved them, and earned some good experience.”

Lucy nodded, glancing at a black-stained boulder. “And we gave a good beating to one of our new enemies.”

Denise chuckled and nudged her shoulder. “Hopefully, they don’t have another army waiting for us.”

###

Andy spent more time than he intended with the Huorn Nomads. It took him a while to draw a map with the distances between landmarks accurate enough that he thought it would lead the giants to the mesa, but he also got distracted several times as various members of Felbol’s clan approached for an introduction. Rather than simply saying hello, Felbol seemed to feel obliged to tell him a little about each individual.

Andy still felt the urgent need to hurry after Lucy, but he didn’t want to insult the Huorn by dismissing some kind of important tradition. As a compromise, he kept his compass open beside him while he worked on the map, frequently checking the needle to see that it was still dialed in on Lucy’s location. Somewhere along the line, he’d convinced himself that, as long as the magical compass could point to Lucy, she was probably okay.

As the giants came and went, he learned about several of their talents; he heard a war story or two, and he even had to endure Felbol’s recounting of how his uncle had hunted some kind of serpent. Each time, he shook their hands, waited for them to leave, and then hurriedly got back to work on his map. By the time he finished and handed the map to Felbol along with an explanation for what the landmarks represented, the sun was high in the eastern sky, and much of the morning had been spent.

Waving his goodbyes, he turned and renewed his journey, jogging through the desert until he was a mile or so removed from the giants. Then, he gathered his mana and cast Flight of the Cinder Hawk. As smoke-formed feathers adorned his body, Andy leaped into the sky, pumping his wings until he hit a powerful updraft, and then he soared at great speed toward the Santa Rita Mountains.

The desert blurred by beneath him, and the warm wind in his eyes felt good—his hawk form was well-designed for hot weather. It made him wonder where Cinder Hawks came from—was it a fiery, craggy land or some kind of desert? Did they live on the slopes of volcanos, or did they thrive underground in great magma-filled caverns? He got so engrossed in his visualizations that he almost forgot to keep track of his mana.

When he remembered with a start and looked at his status, he only had eighty mana remaining. In a panic, Andy dove for the desert, tucking his wings back and streaking through the air like a gray-black missile. To his delight, he touched down in a cloud of dust with time to spare. He canceled the spell as he ran, dragging his talons on the hard-packed ground to bleed off speed. As the magic faded, he resumed his human form.

When the magical smoke cleared and he stood with his chest heaving from the rush, Andy took out his compass and checked his heading. To his surprise, he found he’d gone too far south. The needle was pointing west and slightly north. “Damn,” he muttered, but then, as he watched, the needle bobbed slightly and ticked a hair further north. “Oh! She’s moving!”

Andy summoned Scirocco from his ring and started running. He wasn’t sure how far away Lucy was, but he didn’t think it could be too much farther; he was close enough to the mountains to see the trees dotting their upper slopes and discern individual ridges and valleys between them. While he ran, he said, “You’ve been quiet, buddy.”

My heart rages at our failure to slay the fiend who taunted you so. My mind replays the moment when you gave me the opportunity to pierce his heart, and I failed. If only my magic had answered the call. If only the thunder at my core had lanced out, free of the tethers that keep it chained!

Andy was so startled by the spear’s vehemence that he slowed to a jog and then stopped, holding the weapon before him as he replied, “Hey, man, that wasn’t your fault. I didn’t hit a weak point, and that’s my job. I stabbed quickly, but if I’d paid better attention, I might have seen the perfect point to strike.”

He was shaped like a man. It’s reasonable to strike at the heart.

“Sure, but I knew he wasn’t just a man. I should have been studying him with a critical eye. I won’t mess up like that again.”

Just give me the chance, brother, and his blood will flow.

Andy nodded, lowering the weapon back into a two-handed grip and starting into an easy lope again. “We’ll get him.”

When his mana was full, Andy checked his compass again, adjusted his heading a bit more to the north, and then cast Flight of the Cinder Hawk. He leaped into the sky and, for some reason, he felt a cry bubbling in his throat, almost demanding to be let out. Gamely, he opened his long, hooked beak and shrieked—for the first time not trying to sound like Andy the human, but giving his Cinder Hawk self its voice.

The cry came out like the call of a true bird of prey, splitting the air and resounding over the desert, sending rabbits, quail, and other game scurrying. A primal urge to dive and snatch up one of those fleeing creatures itched the back of Andy’s mind, but he ignored it, pumping his wings and soaring higher. When he was so high that the individual plants were hard to make out, he angled downward, spread his wings, and glided rapidly along the heading toward Lucy.

When his keen eyes picked up two individuals jogging through the desert in the distance, Andy couldn’t control himself—another shriek found its way out of his beak. The two women froze, sliding to a stop on the rough ground, and then hastily scurried under the cover of a palo verde tree. Just before he lost sight of them, Andy saw Lucy unsling her bow, and a realization flashed through his mind like a red alarm light.

“Oh, crap.”