Chapter 542: Concerning, Not Yet Catastrophic

Four days north of Ossara, the trees finally stopped spiraling.

They started leaning instead.

All of them.

Same direction.

The trunks bent at slightly different angles, but every crown tilted north-east as though some ancient wind had passed through the forest and convinced the entire region to remember it forever.

Valerica had noticed the pattern from the ridge weeks ago.

Nobody had explained it then.

Nobody had explained it now.

Nobody had found much else worth explaining either.

Mostly, they walked.

For once, the walking was the entire event.

By the fourth evening, Ashe dropped her pack beside the camp with enough force to make everyone look over.

"I’ve decided this counts as training."

Valerica glanced up from the map.

"Walking."

"Walking without complaining."

Ashe rolled one shoulder.

"That’s the discipline. Kest would be proud."

Isole crouched beside the fire, trying to persuade damp kindling that combustion was still a reasonable thing to do in this world.

"Kest complained constantly."

Ashe frowned.

"About what?"

"Her leg."

"That’s different."

"She complained about it almost every day."

Isole blew gently beneath the kindling.

"She simply complained accurately."

"I complain accurately."

Isole finally looked up.

"You complain like a woman who has never once had to ration complaints and is afraid she’s falling behind."

There was a pause.

Ashe considered the sentence with remarkable seriousness.

Vane watched her decide whether she had been insulted.

Apparently, amusement won.

"That sounded rehearsed."

"It wasn’t."

"That makes it worse."

The fire caught.

Isole sat back with the quiet satisfaction of someone whose argument had just been proven by flame.

Valerica folded one corner of the map.

"For accuracy, Ashe has complained eleven times today."

Ashe stared at her.

"You counted?"

"No."

"Mara?"

Mara said nothing.

That was answer enough.

Mara had a new ledger.

Nobody knew when she had started it.

One evening it simply appeared in her hands, smaller than the old one and already several pages deep.

Nyx noticed first.

Naturally.

She leaned over Mara’s shoulder.

Mara closed the book immediately.

Nyx narrowed her eyes.

"Is that another betting ledger?"

"It’s a record."

"Mara."

"It is technically a record of bets."

"You made another betting ledger."

"I’m not going to apologize for accurate terminology."

Nyx held out one hand.

"Let me see."

"No."

"What are the odds on?"

Mara stared at her.

Nyx stared back.

The contest lasted several seconds.

Eventually Mara appeared to decide that entertainment outweighed whatever dignity she was protecting.

"Whether Ashe and Valerica argue about pastries again before we reach wherever we’re going."

Ashe, halfway through unpacking a blanket, froze.

"What?"

Mara continued.

"Or whether four weeks inside a Dark World finally cured both of you of caring."

"That’s an unfair bet."

"Why?"

"There hasn’t been a pastry in a month."

Ashe spread both hands.

"There is literally nothing left to argue about."

Mara nodded thoughtfully.

"That is exactly what someone about to lose a bet would say."

"I’m not going to invent a pastry argument because you’re gambling on my behavior."

"I never said you would."

Mara opened the ledger again.

"I said Valerica might, once she realizes I’m tracking it."

Everyone looked toward Valerica.

She sat several feet away, annotating the map.

She did not look up.

She said nothing.

The silence lasted long enough to become suspicious.

Nyx slowly smiled.

"Oh, that’s devastating."

Valerica continued writing.

Nobody said anything else.

A full minute passed.

Then:

"For the record."

Everyone turned.

Valerica still did not look up.

"If pastries ever come up again, it will be because Ashe starts it."

Ashe’s mouth fell open.

"And I would like that noted accurately in whatever document is apparently recording my dignity now."

"Noted."

Mara began writing.

Valerica’s head snapped up.

"You’re actually writing it."

"You asked me to."

"I did not ask you to record it while I was still speaking."

"You should have specified timing."

Nyx lay backward against her pack and laughed.

Ashe pointed accusingly at Valerica.

"You just brought up pastries."

"I brought up the hypothetical possibility of pastries."

"That counts."

"It absolutely does not."

Mara’s charcoal began moving faster.

Valerica noticed.

"Stop recording this."

"I can’t alter the evidence."

"There is no evidence."

"You are currently producing it."

Vane decided this was the healthiest argument they had had in weeks.

An hour before the light began whatever passed for evening here, Vane practiced the stillness drill.

Kest had shown it to Ashe first.

Then the others.

Vane remained, by general consensus, unusually bad at it.

He planted his feet.

Settled his breathing.

Relaxed his shoulders.

Isole watched for perhaps five seconds.

Then she laughed.

Actually laughed.

Vane broke posture immediately.

"What?"

Isole covered her mouth.

That made it worse.

"What?"

"You’re doing it again."

"Doing what?"

"The dramatic stillness."

"I’m standing still."

"No."

She lowered her hand, still smiling.

"You’re standing still like you’re waiting for someone to attack you."

"That seems useful."

"It defeats the point."

Vane looked down at himself.

"I’m literally not moving."

"That isn’t the same thing."

She stood and walked over.

"Kest told you this."

"Kest told me a lot of things while hitting me."

"She barely hit you."

"That’s because I’m talented."

Isole ignored him.

"Your shoulders."

"What about them?"

"They’re prepared."

"Prepared shoulders are bad?"

"For this, yes."

She tapped one.

"Stillness is supposed to be empty."

Vane frowned.

"That sounds philosophical."

"It isn’t. Stop trying to make it philosophical."

"That sounds philosophical too."

Isole sighed.

"Try again."

He reset.

This time he deliberately relaxed everything.

Too much, apparently.

Nyx looked over from the boulder she had claimed the instant they established camp.

"You look dead."

Vane opened one eye.

"Helpful."

Isole was trying not to laugh again.

"That’s closer."

"To dead?"

"To still."

He tried a third time.

His posture now resembled, by his own assessment, a man attempting an extremely serious nap while standing.

Isole nodded.

"Better."

"You’re lying."

"I’m encouraging."

"There’s a difference?"

"Kest taught me there is."

"What is it?"

"Mostly tone."

That earned another laugh from Ashe somewhere behind them.

Vane decided the drill was finished for the evening.

Nyx remained on her boulder.

She had claimed it without announcement.

Nobody challenged her.

At some point she glanced upward and made a small motion with her wrist, checking something that did not exist.

Vane noticed.

"You still do that."

Nyx looked down.

"What?"

"Check the time."

She stared at her own hand.

Then laughed quietly.

"Apparently."

There was no watch.

No clock.

Nothing in this sky behaved well enough for one anyway.

Nyx looked back toward the tilted trees.

"Seven weeks since the tower."

Nobody asked how she knew.

Nyx always knew.

"I still check sometimes."

She rubbed her thumb against her wrist.

"Habit."

Isole sat beside the now-stable fire.

"Do you miss it?"

Nyx thought about that.

"The tower?"

"The routine."

Nyx made a face.

"I miss the version of not knowing what I was afraid of that existed before this version of not knowing what I’m afraid of."

Silence.

Ashe looked toward Vane.

Vane looked toward Mara.

Mara looked toward nobody.

Nyx frowned.

"That was funnier in my head."

"I’m not sure it was a joke," Valerica said.

"Neither am I."

Nyx leaned back against the rock.

"Progress, probably."

"What kind?"

"Some kind."

No one asked her to clarify.

They were getting better at allowing incomplete answers.

Dinner was small.

Slightly burned.

Nobody complained.

This was partially because there was not enough food available to justify insulting any of it and partially because Isole had made dinner and everyone valued continued access to healing.

Ashe chewed for several seconds.

"This is—"

Isole looked at her.

Ashe changed course.

"Warm."

"Excellent recovery," Valerica said.

"I was going to say good."

"You visibly changed the sentence halfway through."

"Prove it."

Mara opened the small ledger.

Ashe pointed at her.

"Don’t."

Mara closed it.

Slowly.

"Coward," Nyx said.

Mara ignored her.

They ate.

The rations were beginning to thin.

Not badly.

Enough to notice.

Mara checked the remaining food once they finished, then closed the supply pouch.

"Concerning, not yet catastrophic."

Ashe groaned.

"You say that every day."

"It has been accurate every day."

"At what point does it become catastrophic?"

"When the category changes."

"That explained nothing."

"I’ll notify you."

"Wonderful."

Mara opened the ledger.

"Should I record that?"

"No."

"Noted."

"You just wrote something."

"It may have been unrelated."

"It wasn’t."

"No evidence."

Valerica almost choked on her water.

They remained around the fire after dinner.

Nobody suggested moving.

The tilted forest surrounded them in quiet rows.

The sky refused to become night correctly.

The insects moved in their coordinated little patterns through the grass.

Somewhere far beyond the trees waited another door Nyx had promised existed without knowing exactly what it was.

Tonight, none of it arrived.

No Imperial patrol.

No impossible creature.

No ruined settlement.

No Target Analysis demanding immediate attention.

No revelation hiding beneath an innocent conversation.

Just six people around a fire.

Mara with a ledger she insisted was technically serious.

Valerica pretending she was no longer thinking about pastries.

Ashe almost certainly preparing tomorrow’s first complaint.

Nyx on her boulder.

Isole watching the flames.

Vane sitting beside them with sore feet and a stillness drill he remained terrible at.

Distance covered.

A fire that mostly worked.

Food that qualified as concerning.

Each other.

It was not much.

After everything Ossara had asked of them, Vane found that he did not need it to be.

For one unremarkable evening, nothing happened.

And that was exactly enough.