Chapter 96: Past

The mist had barely finished swallowing the fleeing hunters when the swamp decided we had not suffered enough.

"Ferals," Lee said, his eyes narrowing. "Six. They smelled the blood."

"Whose blood?" Theodore asked.

"The crab’s."

"The crab bled?"

"Everything bleeds if you stab it enough."

Theodore opened his mouth, then wisely closed it.

They came out of the fog in a ragged, shambling line, lean things with too many joints and skin like wet leather stretched over bone.

Their mouths hung open, and a thin, sour drool dripped from their jaws.

Feral creatures had no cunning, no strategy, no fear. Only hunger, which made them predictable and therefore very, very easy to kill.

I did not even summon Thunder Sunlight. I only raised two fingers.

Zip!

The Piercing Leaf left my hand, a green blur no longer than my palm, and went straight through the skull of the first Feral. It came out the other side, curved sharply in the air, and buried itself in the neck of the second.

’Oh,’ I thought. ’This is actually a little beautiful.’

"Show-off," Sera muttered, and cut the third one in half.

Arthur finished the fourth with a clean, almost apologetic stab.

Theodore’s Blood Ray took the fifth through the chest, and Lee, who had not bothered to transform, simply caught the last one by its throat and snapped its neck with a sound like a dry branch breaking.

Silence returned, thick and damp.

"Six," Lee said, wiping his hand on his trousers. "Good. Now we need wood."

We found it in the skeleton of a collapsed tree not far from the path, grey and brittle and perfectly dry beneath the bark.

Arthur hauled the heaviest log over his shoulder like a man who had been waiting his whole life to be useful, while Theodore carried an armful of kindling and complained that it was scratching him. We dragged two of the Feral carcasses back with us as well. A hunter who wastes meat, Lee said, is a hunter who starves.

We reached his tent not long after.

Inside there was a bedroll, a few knives, and a single dented pot hung from a hook like a trophy.

Lee struck a spark. The kindling caught, then the log. Within minutes a steady, golden fire crackled between us, driving the cold back a few paces.

"Pot," Lee said, and tossed it to me.

I caught it, filled it with water from a flask, and set it above the flames. Sera cut the meat into strips with a precision that suggested she had done it a hundred times, and Arthur, bless his sunny heart, found a handful of bitter roots in Lee’s supplies and dropped them in without asking.

"Those are medicinal," Lee warned.

"Medicinal how?"

"They make you stop complaining."

"Wonderful," Theodore said sourly. "Give me a double portion."

The broth began to bubble. The smell was rose, rich and smoky, and my stomach clenched so hard that I almost groaned out loud. I had not realized how hungry I was until the aroma reached me.

We ate in silence at first...

Nobody spoke, because speaking would have meant not eating.

The meat was tough but flavorful.

Eventually, Arthur sat back with a sigh. "That," he said, "was better than anything I have eaten at home."

"Do not tell your cook," Theodore said.

"I would never. She would poison me."

Lee chuckled, a low sound, and turned his bowl slowly in his hands. The firelight carved shadows across his weathered face.

"My father would have liked this," he said quietly. "A fire, a pot, people to share it with."

I glanced up. "Your father?"

"Mm." He nodded. "I was the first Awakened in my family. In the entire line, going back as far as anyone remembers."

Sera tilted her head. "Really?"

"Really. When I became an awakened, my father cried. A grown man, a hard man, and he cried like a child." A small, rueful smile crossed his lips. "He kept slapping my back and telling the whole street. He even closed the forge for a day, and he never closed the forge for anything."

"The forge?" Arthur asked.

"My family were blacksmiths. Famous ones, in Valemont. Some say the best." There was pride in his voice. "Swords, plows, horseshoes, hinges, anything. If a nobleman wanted a blade that would not break, he came to us. My grandfather’s work hangs in the halls of three Viscounts."

"Impressive," I said, and meant it.

"My father was more than a smith, though. He ran the operation on the railway that connected Oakland and Hulam. Every rail, every bolt, every bridge pin, he oversaw it personally. He used to say that iron remembers the hand that shaped it." Lee stared into the fire. "I believed him. I still do."

For a moment, no one spoke. Sparks drifted upward and vanished in the dark.

Then Lee looked at us. "And you lot? What were you, before all this?"

Sera and I glanced at each other.

"Siblings," I said.

"I can see that." He smirked. "Your faces. The same eyes, the same crooked eyebrow when you are annoyed. You are practically one person split in two."

"I am nothing like him," Sera said at once.

"You made the exact same face just now," Lee said.

Arthur burst out laughing. Theodore wheezed into his sleeve.

When it finally faded, I wiped my eye. "Our father is a baron. Our family has had Awakened in it before, though never anyone remarkable. He works in steel manufacturing, mostly. Foundries and mills."

"Steel," Lee repeated, and his eyebrows lifted. "Now that is a language I speak."

"I thought you might say that."

He nodded slowly, with the satisfaction of a man discovering a distant cousin.

"Mine is a baron too," Arthur offered, raising a hand like a schoolboy. "He owns a small bank in Valemont. Very small. Mostly he lends money to farmers and complains about interest."

"Very noble," Theodore said.

"Very boring."

"And you?" Lee asked, nodding at Theodore.

Theodore straightened with exaggerated dignity. "My father is a viscount. He also owns a jewellery shop. He sells rings and necklaces to people who cannot afford them and pretends not to notice."

"That is a strange combination."

"You have no idea. Dinner conversations are exhausting."

"My father is an Earl, I don’t know what he does to be honest," Mary said.

Lee laughed outright this time, a deep, genuine sound that echoed beneath the rock. "A blacksmith’s son, two barons’ children, a viscount’s and an earl’s. What a ridiculous little gathering this is."

"Ridiculous," I agreed, "but the best kind."

The fire burned lower. The broth was gone. The Feral bones lay stripped and cleaned, and a heavy, comfortable stillness had settled over the camp, the sort that only comes after good food and better company.

I set down my bowl and rose to my feet.

"Well," I said, brushing the dust from my knees. "It is time for me to go."