Chapter 38-Sarah (Patreon)

Loose shale slid under Sarah's boot as she reached the ridge, and she caught herself on the rough rock before her weight could shift backward. Wind pushed through the pass with a metallic taste that stuck to the back of her throat. Far off, a sharp crack echoed as something shifted among the peaks—rock, maybe, or something pretending to be rock.

She crouched at the crest to lower her profile, the way Garrick had drilled into her, and grinned before she could stop herself.

This was it. This was actually it—her team, her mission, her mountains. No Harold standing three steps behind her with that look on his face, the one that said I know seventeen ways this could kill you. No council meetings. No reports. Just rock and wind and whatever was waiting to test them next.

The others stopped behind her without being told. At least that much had stuck.

She scanned the slope ahead, already knowing Mira would spot whatever was out there before she did. Mira and Jace both had gotten annoyingly good at it—perfect scouts who actually liked the program that had nearly beaten Sarah. At least until the end. None of them talked about the end.

Scan the slope. Pause. Check the rocks above the trail. Look. Listen. Feel the ground through her boots. Her body moved through the sequence Optio Eldrin had burned into her, each motion measured and automatic.

Nothing moved that shouldn't.

She shifted her weight back and motioned the others forward, then stood and stretched, rolling the stiffness out of her shoulders. The air tasted like cold metal and pine, and somewhere below them, a stream was cutting through rock she couldn't see. Harold would have already mapped the water sources in his head, calculated distances, and started planning supply lines.

She shook the thought away. He wasn't here. That was the point. He’d better like that figurine she made for him. Or else.

Jace climbed up beside her first, one hand holding the map Harold had given them while the other brushed dust from his sleeve. He started to reach for her shoulder, thought better of it, and let his hand fall.

"You're doing the thing again."

Sarah kept her eyes on the ridge, still half-smiling. "What thing."

"You're—" He stopped, jaw working like he was chewing on words he knew better than to say. After a moment, he just cleared his throat.

"Shut up, Jace." Mira's voice came from behind them.

She stepped past him and knelt beside Sarah, elbows on her knees, studying the terrain ahead with that quiet focus she slipped into when she was reading the land instead of people.

Jace sighed the sigh of a man who'd learned when to fold. "Jeez, fine." He shoved the map in his belt and rubbed his face.

Theo and Robert climbed up behind them, boots scraping gravel. Theo leaned his hands on his knees and looked out across the jagged slopes, still catching his breath.

"You know," he said, "I'm starting to understand why nobody builds vacation homes in mountains like this."

He shook his head. "Where I grew up, you could sit outside and smell the ocean. My granddad built a porch just so we could watch storms roll in. Out here?" He gestured at a particularly vicious-looking rock formation. "All I can think about is how every single rock looks like it wants to break my ankle."

"That's the best part," Sarah said, surprising herself by how much she meant it. "Only a couple of teams have been here. Nobody's mapped it, named it, or built a visitor center. It's actually wild."

Theo looked at her like she'd suggested they set themselves on fire for fun.

Robert laughed and leaned on his axe. "There's actually a couple of famous paintings of Hannibal crossing the Alps. He's fighting various—"

"And now I see why we wouldn't have hung out back home," Theo interrupted, though his smile took the edge off.

Robert looked affronted for exactly one second before he caught the joke. "Alright, alright. What do you miss most, then?"

"Not having to butcher my own food." Theo didn't even hesitate.

Robert smirked. "Bet you survived on protein bars."

"Sure did. But right now? Pizza. Actual pizza."

"Street tacos." Robert tapped his axe on the ground. "Superior in every way."

Theo squinted at him. "That's always your answer."

"Because I'm always right. You can eat them anywhere, any time, no plates, no—"

"What about you?" Mira cut in, looking at Sarah. "What do you miss?"

Sarah opened her mouth to deflect, then stopped. The honest answer surprised her.

"My brother's couch," she said. "Back home, I mean. Earth home. We had this ugly brown thing in the living room, and I used to crash on it when I got home." She picked at a loose thread on her glove. "He'd make terrible coffee and pretend he wasn't worried about whatever I was going through."

The words hung there, more than she'd meant to say.

"Harold makes terrible coffee?" Jace asked, eyebrows raised.

"The worst. Don't ever let him near a kettle unsupervised."

Mira smiled, soft and knowing, and Sarah looked away before Mira could read whatever was on her face. The communion bond between them made privacy harder than it used to be—Mira probably already knew Sarah had been thinking about Harold half the morning, even while she was glad to be away from him.

Ahead of them, Mira raised one finger.

Everyone froze.

She inched forward, pausing near a stone where a cluster of pale feathers and a streak of drying blood stained the shale. The wind flicked pebbles against a gouge torn into the rock—something heavy had dragged through here recently. Mira leaned forward, eyes narrowing toward a patch of dark stone halfway up the ridge.

"Something moved."

Sarah followed her gaze. The rock held still.

Then a length of scaled body slid against the stone, its coloring so close to the rock that the creature nearly vanished again once it stopped.

"Ambush snake." Mira's voice barely carried.

Jace exhaled. "Damn. That thing really can blend in. I didn't see it."

Theo groaned. "I hate snakes."

Sarah studied the ridge a moment longer, then grinned at him. "Theo."

He was already grimacing. He knew what was coming.

"You're killing it."

"That sentence could have gone several different directions." He drew his sword anyway. "Just 'cause I beat Jace on the obstacle course doesn't mean I should always be bait."

"Think of it as building character," Sarah said.

"I have plenty of character. I'd like to build some self-preservation instead."

Jace clapped him on the shoulder. "You got it, dude!"

Mira stepped aside. Jace moved down the slope with Theo, widening the brush for him while Robert rested his axe on his shoulder.

"Remember what we're testing," Robert said.

Theo's grip tightened on his sword. "Yeah. I remember."

The snake lifted its head, tongue flicking.

Theo climbed halfway up before it struck.

The creature lunged and dropped, jaws snapping past his shoulder by inches before it crashed into the ground. Gravel sprayed. Theo twisted away and swung, but his blade glanced off the thick scales. If they hadn't seen it, it would have taken someone's head off before they could react.

"Little help would be great!"

"You're doing great!" Jace shouted back. "Try stabbing it!"

"Aim for the soft spot behind the head!" Sarah called because she couldn't help herself, and because heckling Theo was one of the few leadership perks she actually enjoyed.

The snake lunged again, and this time Theo moved sideways instead of back, forcing the creature to twist its body along the slope while its coils scraped across stone.

"Move left!"

Theo shifted and drove his blade down. The strike pierced deeper, but the snake was faster than he could track—it wrapped around his legs and thigh, thick muscles squeezing until he grunted and the air rushed out of him.

"Finish it!" Mira's shout cut through.

Theo planted his foot and drove the sword through its skull before the fangs could sink home.

The snake shuddered, tail thrashing against the rocks, and then the body went still.

Theo stepped back, wiping his blade on the grass while he tried to get his breathing under control. "Still hate snakes."

Jace climbed up and nudged the body with his boot. "That one almost got you."

"Thanks for noticing." Theo rolled his eyes.

They waited. Wind slid down the ridge. Nothing else happened.

Theo frowned. "Nothing."

Mira tilted her head. "No perk?"

He shook his head, and Sarah felt the frustration ripple through the communion bond before Jace even opened his mouth.

"That should have triggered something," Jace said. "First kill of a new monster usually does."

Sarah crouched beside the snake and ran her fingers along the scales near the entry wound. "The communion is doing exactly what Harold warned about."

The words came out more bitter than she'd intended. Of course, Harold had been right. Harold was always right, with his quiet warnings and his careful plans and his seventeen contingencies for everything that could go wrong. She missed him, and she resented missing him, and both feelings sat in her chest like rocks she couldn't quite swallow.

Robert stepped closer, his jaw tightening at the memory of that old blood sliding down his throat. "I know he said our normal perk rate gain would be lowered, but this is getting ridiculous."

Sarah met his eyes and nodded. Robert rested the axe across his shoulder again.

"That explains something."

Theo looked at him. "What?"

"I haven't gained any crafting perks either. Been working toward them this entire time."

Jace blinked. "Wait—I figured you already had those. You've been at it for weeks."

"Exactly." Robert tapped the axe with one finger. "By all my calculations, I should've picked up at least one by now. And you didn't either, during the scout training."

Sarah frowned. "None of us did. The only new thing any of us got was that stealth perk from Councilor Margaret, and that only went to Robert."

Mira leaned against a rock. "The perks are supposed to spread, though."

"Only under injury," Sarah said. "Exhaustion. Or high threat."

Theo crossed his arms. "That fight felt pretty threatening to me."

Robert shook his head. "You knew we were here. There wasn't any actual risk."

Theo opened his mouth, then closed it. "Alright. Fair."

Jace crouched beside the snake. "So we need something worse. Maybe one of those stone trolls. I'd do a lot for a regeneration perk."

"The Thornwalkers barely survived their stone troll," Sarah said, "and Vera's team is better than us." She said it matter-of-factly, no bitterness—just truth. "But we'll find something. That's why we're out here."

Mira glanced toward the deeper slopes where the mountains folded into shadow. "That part won't be hard to find. We all saw the Thornwalker report from when they crossed. And they've got better stealth perks than we do."

"Their passive stealth and perception benefits are so annoying," Jace muttered.

"You know," he said after a moment, "as bad as this hike is, it makes the scout training seem almost worth it. It's already helped us a lot."

Mira rolled her eyes. "You just want to talk about the capture-the-flag exercise again."

Theo looked up. "What happened? I was on the other side of the training area."

Mira groaned while Jace's face lit up with the particular glow of someone about to retell their favorite story.

"Garrick told both teams the same thing—steal a banner. Then he surrounded the banner with traps and let a couple monsters loose in the area."

Mira nodded, examining some of the snake scales. "And this one"—she jerked her thumb at Jace—"managed to sneak in and actually grab it."

Jace spread his hands. "Thank you."

"And then he fell in the river trying to run back with it." She smirked. "Still wearing that scar from the rock, aren't you?"

"The rocks were slippery. And I look roguish with the scar."

"Rogues don't scream the entire way down the bank."

Sarah snorted before she could stop herself. "I heard that scream from across the training field. I thought someone was dying."

"It was tactical yelling," Jace insisted. "I was warning everyone away from the rocks."

Theo looked at him appraisingly. "How was his pitch? Tenor or baritone?"

"Soprano," Sarah said. "Definitely soprano."

"It was not—"

"Jace, I was there. Dogs in the next valley started howling."

The laughter cut through the tension, and for a moment, Sarah let herself enjoy it—, giving each other shit the way they were supposed to. Harold would have liked this, she thought. He would have stood off to the side with that almost-smile he did when he was pleased but didn't want to show it, and later he would have told her she was doing a good job without actually saying the words.

She missed that. She hated that she missed it.

She stood and brushed dust from her hands while the others kept laughing. The mountains waited ahead, darker where the pass narrowed.

"Alright," she said. "Let's keep moving."

Theo followed after a moment, still adjusting his sword strap. "You realize next time we test this, we might actually get hurt." His fingers lingered over a crack in the leather where the buckle had nearly torn free in the fight. "If we go down out here, we might not be able to walk out."

Mira caught up to walk beside her, close enough that their shoulders almost touched. The communion bond hummed between them—Mira checking in without asking, offering presence instead of words.

Sarah let her.

The pass carried them deeper into the mountains, toward whatever would finally answer the challenge. And somewhere behind them, a day's travel and a lifetime away, Harold was probably staring at a map and worrying about her.

Good. Let him worry. She'd give him something worth worrying about, while the pull in her chest got stronger and drew her deeper into the mountains.