We made our camp within the protected enclosure provided by the evergreens and waited for the beastman to wake up. Sigmir had looked him over and guessed that he was a youth, maybe fifteen winters old, as she put it.

During the night, we put up a watch, feeling a need to have someone awake, just in case he woke up and did something stupid. In addition, I did not trust Adra’s wards against an enemy that had captured her before, I had no aspirations to study dryadic blood magic from a sacrificial point of view.

Sadly, the night did not pass without incident. As coincidence would have it, the youth woke during Adra’s watch and the sight of a dryad, illuminated by the flickering fire caused his awakening to be noisy, waking the Sigmir and me as well. Maybe it was the rude awakening after far too little sleep but I was rather grumpy.

“Settle down, if you undo my hard work healing you with your hysteria, I will just let you bleed out.” I growled at him. focusing on Lenore’s ability to make myself undoubtedly understood.

It did not help much, before I had spoken he had fearfully fixated on Adra, now his eyes were darting between Adra and me, as if trying to find out who would kill him first.

Sigmir rose out of the furs beside me and the relief on his face was almost comical to witness.

“Nobody will harm you, child. We found you in this shrub, dying. Morgana here saved your life, so be a little grateful.” Sigmir said, a lot less grumpy than my growl but then, I had held the first watch, giving me only about an hour of sleep in her arms, judging by the interface-clock whereas Sigmir had last watch giving her about four hours of sleep more.

“Try to catch some more sleep, we will talk in the morning.” she continued.

He opened his mouth, as if to answer, but a sharp glare from me caused it to snap shut, with only the sound of teeth clicking together coming out.

Seeing that he was suitably silent, I rolled back over and pulled Sigmir back down. No way was I giving up my hug-pillow.

The rest of the night passed quietly. At one point, I woke briefly when Adra roused Sigmir for her watch, and I used that to go into the real world for a short time, taking care of necessary business out there.

Back in game, I was able to catch a little more shut-eye but I had a feeling that I would be rather grumpy during the day. Some time later, though, I got one of my favorite wake-up calls. Soft lips, gently caressing my own, strong hands petting my hair and a warm arm around me. There was no way I could be grumpy when waking up like that, I just had to smile and return Sigmir’s affection. We enjoyed each other until Ylva interrupted us. I had not known that she was outside her Hallow, so I was a little surprised, but apparently she had gone hunting during Sigmir’s guard and caught us some meat for breakfast.

I went out, gathering some wood while Sigmir prepared the meat and then it was time to cook. I did the cooking while Sigmir woke the other two before taking care of her gear. It was a strange sort of domesticity but it felt quite good. Despite being in the middle of nowhere, I felt at home in a way I had never felt before. Maybe there was truth in the saying “Home is where the heart is”, and my home was now with Sigmir. Before dark thoughts could intrude, I focused on the mechanical task of cooking. As I busied myself, I heard Adra talk to our guest.

“Maybe we can start anew, in the light of day. My name is Adra, the one next to the fire is Morgana and the one with the axe is Sigmir.” she spoke in a friendly, unthreatening voice, trying to put the child at ease.

It did not quite work that way, he glared at her for a moment before focusing on Sigmir. “My name is Rai. Why is a Jonari out here with such strange company?”

A part of me was surprised that he knew about Sigmir’s tribe but it made sense. There was probably no other giant-blood-tribe in the area, so to the child, any giant-blood was automatically of that tribe.

“I am travelling with my friends, child. But you are impolite, you know that?” Sigmir answered in a slightly scolding tone.

“Don’t call me child. I’m a junior hunter, I am not a child.” the child barked with embarrassment tinting his voice.

“Well, then, Junior Hunter,” I said, mockingly emphasising his title, “Why don’t you tell us what happened back on the clearing? We found dryad and beastman-corpses, looking as if they have killed each other, but I’d like to know more.”

He looked at me for a second before looking back at Sigmir. She had fixed him with a bit of an angry glare, strong enough to prod him into talking.

“We were out hunting. It was my first hunt but we had bad luck. There was little to no prey to be found. We had just taken our midday-break when they came. Like the wind, they struck, blowing through the trees. We fought, but they were just too strong. I was separated from the others and retreated into the trees. I had been wounded in the fighting and needed to find a space to gather strength before going back to the village.”

Somehow, his tale sounded strange to me. Had his elders not taken care of the youth in their midst, making sure that his back was covered in the meele? Didn’t they know anything about formations? Out of curiosity, I tried an idea I had a few days earlier. Kallista had some way to keep others from noticing her observe-skill so there was at least one way to do so. I had concealment-runes, maybe I could find a way to emulate what she did. I did not want to practise on Sigmir or Adra but I had no such reticence when it came to the child, Rai.

I closed my left eye, fearing that Lenore’s presence would change things and imagined a small runic formation out of concealment runes around the eye, imagining that the skill passed through the midpoint and ‘picked up’ the concealment on its way.

Skill increased You increased your skill: Darkness Rune-Mastery [57/100]

It probably worked as the youth did not twitch or pause in his retelling as I Learned that he was a level 25 beastman. I was a little confused about his low level, Sigmir had told me that she had managed to breach level fifty before we ever met and was weakened afterwards. Maybe a difference in culture or Sigmir was just that good. Probably Sigmir’s raw talent was the cause, she was pretty awesome after all.

“The village? Are you from Adernas-village? Father told me it was the closest beastman-village from the Jonari village.” Sigmir asked.

“Yes! Yes, I am.” he enthused. By now, breakfast was done and I prepared four servings. Adra took her own and the one for the child and brought it over to him, while I served Sigmir. I saw her scowl a little when she saw that the child had just taken the food without a word of thanks to either me or Adra, he was just digging in and looking at Sigmir from time to time. Her smile returned when I handed her the food and she thanked me in a carrying voice, making sure that the child heard her. Sadly, he just ignored it in favor of shovelling more food into his mouth.

Sitting next to Sigmir, it was easy to feign loving whispers to her. We must have looked just like two girls in love but sadly, I was not whispering sweet nothings into her ears, or describing just what I would do to her the next time we had either a bed or a warm bath, no, my whispers were a little darker.

“Do you think that Jongarn has told them to keep watch for you? Should we avoid the village and make sure that no report of us reaches it?” I asked, glancing over to Rai for a moment.

She pulled me onto her lap, ignoring the hindrance it was to eating and whispered back.

“No, I don’t think so. He would not sully the tribe’s reputation with the locals. I think that he is aware that sending Travellers after us is his best bet. The Travellers will probably leave the area soon after and the tribe’s reputation is safe. Or maybe he plans to kill them after they returned me, I’m not sure he is aware of the implications of them being Travellers.”

Hearing that, I was a little relieved, I would have hated to waste time and Astral Power on a fool we just had to kill afterwards.

After breakfast, we started moving in the direction Rai suggested was leading to Adernas, all four of us moving on two feet, I did not want to show all our cards, just in case Sigmir was wrong about Jongarn, the son of the Jonari tribal-chief.