Chapter 174

The sun had just slipped behind the mountains when we returned home, but dusk came fast in the highlands. The eastern sky was already swallowed by darkness while the first stars timidly pierced the deepening blue overhead.

I hugged each of the ferals goodbye.

Clo threw devil horns at me and stuck her tongue out before stepping away.

Moss didn’t even bother stepping. She just wandered out through the gate and vanished into the dark like some oversized cryptid returning to the woods.

One by one, the others disappeared to wherever they spent their nights.

The plan for tomorrow was simple enough - I’d track down the new waystation using Vin’s descriptions. And for that, I needed better maps than anything Elise kept in her library. Her collection had maps of kingdoms, trade routes, and major terrain features, sure - but not the kind of detailed survey maps that showed isolated farms, hidden hollows, hunting trails, or abandoned cabins. If the Covenant was hiding waystations out there, I needed something far more precise.

So I sent a message to Amberleigh requesting another meeting.

The response came the next morning. He would be occupied with important business for at least a week.

Part of me immediately bristled. My thoughts went ugly fast. The first waystation he’d sent me to had turned into an ambush. Was he involved somehow? Working with the Covenant? Had he known? Had the whole thing been a setup from the start?

But this was Amberleigh.

The Archmagus was high council to the queen of Arvellia. He had responsibilities to an entire kingdom. He’d even warned me tensions were rising both within and beyond its borders. I couldn’t reasonably expect him to drop everything because I wanted to borrow some maps.

And beyond that... I’d known him nearly five years now.

He’d helped me repeatedly. I’d helped him. Through all of it, he’d never been anything except kind, pragmatic, and patient with me - a man trying to hold together a kingdom while gods, mortals, and Myrddin all pulled the world apart in different directions.

I pushed the paranoia aside.

Instead, I reached out to Crowhurst. He didn’t particularly like me, but there was mutual respect there. We both understood what the other was capable of, what was at stake, and how badly failure could spiral. If anyone could help me acquire detailed regional maps without wasting days, it was probably him.

While I waited for a response, I made my rounds.

I checked in with Ashlara, Elise, Mirri, and Serah. I played with Briva and Morien. Talked with Naevira. Tried very hard not to think about hidden waystations and gallows nurseries and blindfolded wagon rides through sulfur hills.

By early afternoon, Crowhurst still hadn’t replied and the weather had turned vicious.

The wind screamed through the foothills hard enough to rattle shutters and bend trees. Rain hammered the area in dense silver sheets while lightning split the mountainside again and again, thunder following so quickly it shook the ground beneath our feet.

Everyone immediately scattered to prepare.

Goats were rushed into barns. Chickens gathered into coops. Windows barred. Drainage ditches cleared and widened. Anything loose was tied down before the storm carried it away.

Situated as we were in the foothills, Highstone and the surrounding villages were prime territory for flash floods. The rocky ground didn’t absorb water well, and the mountains gathered rain like giant stone funnels. Ravines, hollows, and cracks in the hills turned into deadly torrents with terrifying speed.

From there we split up - each of us took a village. Torvek remained in Highstone on guard duty. Mirri went to Pinefall. Ashlara to Mudcross. Serah to Snagfield. Elise to Reedwatch. And I stepped to Twinfurrow.

Honestly, Torvek had become a lifesaver. With him, we finally had enough capable adults that we could send someone to each village. And with Issa, Brinja, Lilae, and Tib, emergencies no longer meant abandoning the children every time disaster struck.

Twinfurrow was chaos when I arrived.

A barn had collapsed, trapping Dreg and his son Jor inside along with several goats. Goblins were frantically widening drainage trenches to keep floodwater from drowning their crops. Others wrestled screaming livestock through the mud while trying to secure homes and children against the storm.

And one of Brakkaali’s grandsons - Ruk - was missing.

At that point, triage was all I could manage. The fields could wait. Between the demesne and our existing stores, we could survive the loss of crops.

People came first - Dreg and Jor first. Then Ruk.

Getting the two goblins out of the collapsed barn took far longer than I’d hoped. Even with my strength and magic, every beam we shifted caused the wreckage to groan and settle dangerously around the trapped survivors beneath it.

The other goblins and I worked carefully through the storm.

Jor came out first, his arm and clavicle broken badly enough that even moving him made him scream. Then the goats exploded free from the wreckage in a panicked flood of wet fur and terrified bleating. Finally we managed to drag Dreg clear. One leg was broken in two places, and the ankle of the other had snapped completely sideways. I healed what I could while rain poured off my face in sheets.

Then I went looking for Ruk.

Alone.

The storm had only worsened. The hillsides were slick with mudslides, thunder swallowed any attempt at communication, and I couldn’t guarantee anyone else’s safety out there. My hope was that my ability to see Faith would cut through the rain and darkness enough to find him.

I headed south based on his last known location and one simple assumption - if he’d fallen or been swept away, downhill was where he’d go.

Twice lightning struck trees close enough to leave my vision spotted white. Four separate trees crashed down near me hard enough to shake the hillside.

Then a rockslide swept my feet out from under me.

Several minutes later, a surge of floodwater slammed into me like a charging beast, drove me face-first into a stone outcropping, and carried me nearly a hundred feet downhill before I managed to stop myself.

At this point it was becoming dangerous, even for me. Not because I thought I’d die. But because I was spending more effort surviving the mountain than actually searching it.

And there was a lot of south to search.

Another bolt of lightning struck somewhere to my left. A tree exploded in the darkness.

As the spots faded from my vision, one remained. Blue and purple. Faith. West of me.

I climbed over slick stones and fallen timber until I reached a shallow rock overhang. Half the shelter had collapsed long ago, but what remained formed a surprisingly sturdy refuge from the rain.

And inside sat a goblin boy around twelve years old beside a small fire.

Relief washed over me. I ducked into the cramped shelter and wiped rainwater and mud from my eyes. “Thank goodness,” I breathed. “You’re safe.”

Ruk looked terrified - not of me, but of the storm itself.

“What are you doing out here?” I asked.

“I was huntin’ when it started rainin’,” he said shakily. “Then I got swept downhill and got lost.”

“Everyone’s worried sick,” I told him. “I’m glad you had enough sense to find shelter and build a fire. It’s bad out there.”

“I didn’t build it,” he said. “It was already burnin’ when I got here.” He glanced toward the entrance nervously. “Thought maybe a hunter lit it. But I haven’t seen anyone in hours.”

That worried me immediately. Because nobody abandoned a warm shelter in weather like this unless something had gone very wrong.

I’d only made it this far because I was a god. Floodwater couldn’t drown me. Falling trees wouldn’t kill me. Hell, at this point I wasn’t entirely convinced lightning would even inconvenience me.

But an ordinary hunter? A normal person could die out here a dozen different ways before dawn.

Still, I couldn’t leave Ruk alone in the storm. Not with flash floods, mudslides, and lightning turning the mountain into a deathtrap by the minute.

“We’re going home,” I told him firmly. “Then I’m coming back to look for the hunter.”

I gripped his shoulder and stepped us both back to Twinfurrow.

* * *

I spent the rest of the night searching for the missing hunter.

The storm finally broke sometime after midnight, though “broke” mostly meant it stopped actively trying to kill me every five minutes. Even with that mercy, I found nothing. No tracks. No body. No abandoned gear. No blood. Nothing.

In the morning I went to Vel, and she gathered the pack without question. We searched the mountains and forests for the entire day. If my bloodchildren couldn’t track someone, then either the hunter had gotten away… or they’d never really been there to begin with.

Neither answer sat well with me.

By the time I returned home that evening, I was exhausted down to the bone. Not from lack of sleep - I’d evolved past that boundary awhile ago. No, this was the kind of exhaustion that came from tension. From stress. From hours of fighting mountains, weather, uncertainty, and the growing feeling that invisible hands were moving pieces around me.

Dinner was still about an hour away, so I stripped and climbed into the bath.

The stones I’d enchanted years ago kept the water perpetually hot and fresh. Steam curled softly through the room, carrying away the lingering chill that had settled deep into my muscles over the last two days.

I eased myself into the water and immediately felt some of the tension begin to melt away. I slipped beneath the surface and scrubbed mud, sweat, and rainwater from my hair. When I resurfaced, I drifted lazily to the side of the bath, rested my head against the stone, and closed my eyes.

A timid knock sounded at the door.

I sighed. “Come on in, Naevira,” I called.

The door opened carefully and she slipped inside before quietly shutting it behind her.

“Welcome back to the real world,” I said.

She tilted her head slightly in confusion.

“I mean outside the demesne,” I clarified.

Understanding spread across her face. “Ah. Yes.” She clasped her hands together lightly. “Issa brought me out to help with Briva and Morien during the storm. Though we spent most of the night within the demesne, the little ones eventually became hungry.”

She paused. “How did you know it was me?”

“Because you’re the only one who would knock.”

She nodded absently as her eyes wandered around the bathing room. “It is always strange to me that this chamber remains so warm,” she admitted.

I smiled faintly. “That’s the bath. It’s enchanted to stay hot and circulate fresh water constantly.”

“Did you find the hunter?” she asked quietly.

I sighed and shook my head. “No. No sign of them anywhere.” I rubbed a hand across my face. “I even had the pack searching all day. If they couldn’t find anything, then either the hunter got very far away very quickly…” I frowned. “Or there never was a hunter.”

Naevira looked toward the steaming water thoughtfully.

“If they lit the fire,” she said softly, “they were trying to help Ruk.”

“Maybe,” I agreed. “Or maybe something happened that forced them to leave suddenly. It’s possible Ruk just got lucky and stumbled into shelter.”

She looked unconvinced. “Is that likely?”

“No,” I said flatly. “Nothing about last night was normal.”

I leaned my head back against the stone again.

“Amberleigh suddenly being unavailable? I get that. He’s got a lot going on. Storms happen in the foothills, though not usually that bad. Barns collapse sometimes too.” I frowned deeper. “But that barn was well maintained. It stood for a hundred years. It didn’t just decide to fall apart during the worst storm of the season.”

I rubbed at my eyes tiredly. “And then there’s Ruk finding a fire already burning in the middle of a mountain storm with nobody nearby.”

The more I thought about it, the worse it felt. “Something was happening last night,” I muttered. “Probably several somethings.” I emphasized the words bitterly. “One or two events might be coincidence. But all of them together?” I shook my head slowly. “No. The storm and the barn might be connected. Ruk getting lost may have been connected too. But someone lit that fire.”

Silence settled between us except for the soft ripple of water.

Finally I exhaled heavily. “If anything,” I muttered, “Amberleigh is the coincidence.”

I slid beneath the water again for a few moments, letting the heat swallow me completely.

When I resurfaced, Naevira was still standing there quietly, watching me with worried eyes.

“I’ll talk to the others tonight,” I told her. “See what they think.”

I gestured vaguely toward the door. “If you’ll excuse me, I should probably get dressed before dinner.”