Chapter 927: To The Eastern Ravine (1)

The pace toward the eastern ravine was not the same as the pace they had used to reach the western forest line, nor the one that had carried them across the broken terrain toward the northern collapsed road.

Liam and Asher still moved quickly, cutting through the forest with practiced control, but the sharpness had eased by a careful measure. Their speed remained decent, enough to keep the task from turning comfortable, yet no longer so demanding that every stride required constant explosive adjustment. Above and slightly ahead, Raven carried Celia through the breaks in the canopy, her wings beating in a steady rhythm that matched the altered pace below.

Nearly three hours had passed in almost continuous movement.

They had stopped only when the anchors forced them to, and even those stops had been brief, tense, and occupied by things trying to kill them. Liam and Asher were not ordinary second-years, and both could push far harder if they leaned fully on Myst to sustain their bodies, but that would be wasteful. Endurance mattered more across six hours than showing how fast they could burn energy in the first half of the route. They needed recovery while still making progress.

The northern collapsed road had cost them less time than Liam expected. That gave them a little extra space to avoid reckless haste before reaching the ravine. Not much. The distance from the collapsed road to the eastern ravine was nearly triple the stretch from Veyrhold to the western forest line, and distance had a way of eating confidence if treated casually. But it was enough to slow down without surrendering urgency.

Liam kept the pace controlled.

Asher did not complain at first, which meant he understood the same thing even if admitting it would damage his personality.

The forest shifted around them, opening and tightening in uneven patterns. Old roots crossed underfoot in tangled ropes. Small ridges of stone rose beneath moss, forcing slight course corrections. At times, the terrain sloped gradually eastward, then leveled again in patches of damp grass and dark soil. Morning had strengthened, though under the trees it remained broken into strips of light and shade.

The task had gone more smoothly than Liam expected.

Most people would probably not call it smooth. They had fought Glassmaws, crossed a Hollowback-infested road, activated two anchors under pressure, and still had a long route to the ravine with time falling away behind them. But most people had poor standards for what the academy could make troublesome. Considering the assessment, the scattered deployment, and the way every useful reward seemed placed behind teeth, this had been manageable so far.

That was the part worth mistrusting.

Still, the extra time mattered. Ravines punished careless movement. Loose stone, narrow footing, blind drops, wet channels, echo distortion, and anything that used the terrain better than they did could turn one mistake into a serious cost. Speed inside that kind of place was not always speed. Sometimes it was simply a fast way to fall.

Liam’s thoughts shifted briefly toward Veyrhold.

By now, Sheila should have the central-structure teams working. Ariana would be near the reservoir. Dylan would either be useful or dangerously motivated by the presence of Alchemy students. Maxwell and Quenivarius would be studying the upper chamber, assuming Quenivarius had not been murdered by Dylan’s inability to say his name properly. Edith would be turning every discovery into something enforceable. Felix would be writing until his hand became a separate tragedy. If they had made meaningful progress, then the central system might begin becoming more than a dead room with interesting carvings.

Liam hoped they succeeded before he returned.

Not for sentiment.

If the reservoir or control system became usable, Veyrhold would become less dependent on him moving through every interior problem like a shadow janitor with knives. The more structure Sheila gained, the less often he had to be one of the settlement’s constant problem-solvers. That would let him maneuver elsewhere.

His eyes moved ahead through the trees.

After the task ended, there might be room for a detour before returning. Not large. Not stupid. But useful, if handled correctly. He wanted more information about Eldervale itself, not just the places the academy had pointed at. He wanted to understand routes, threat densities, how the realm shifted, and whether there were signs of the observers hidden near their movements. He still disliked not knowing where most of the academy watchers were. That ignorance sat beneath his skin like a splinter.

The issue was Asher and Celia.

Asher might be manageable. Loud, irritating, arrogant, and often built like a person trying to turn blunt force into a social philosophy, but manageable. More than that, Liam considered him dependable. Annoyingly dependable. Not only in combat either. Asher could be sharp when he chose to be, and even when he complained, he responded well to clear danger and practical pressure. He was one of the few people in their year Liam would trust to not become useless in a sudden crisis.

Celia was different.

She had shown she could think. She had also shown she could put aside personal prejudice when the task demanded it. That was worth noting. But they had only truly begun dealing with each other a few hours ago, and Liam did not trust her near anything personal. Not his own work. Not his hidden questions. Not anything connected to the observers.

No.

Celia would need to return to Veyrhold with the task result.

Asher could maybe be shaken loose or tolerated, depending on the situation. Celia could not.

Liam’s mind drifted, briefly and unwillingly, toward Dylan.

With what Dylan had displayed recently, especially around the central structure, Liam was becoming increasingly certain that the blond idiot’s intelligence was on another level when he stopped acting like a walking distraction. Not Ariana’s kind of intelligence. Ariana was broad, deep, and unnervingly precise across magic theory, Myst behavior, and spell structure. Dylan’s mind worked differently, sharper around mechanisms, material logic, pattern recognition, and whatever strange intersection existed between Forgemastery, Alchemy, and dramatic nonsense.

Still, he might be one of the few people close enough to Ariana intellectually to matter.

That was irritating.

The person in question was still Dylan Wellington, blond stress relief of a clown.

’Wasteful design,’ Liam thought.

Above, Celia rode Raven with less stiffness than before.

She was not comfortable. Comfort was nowhere near the right word. Her opinion of Raven had not transformed into trust, and her dislike of dark magic still sat close to the surface, even when she controlled it better. But she no longer gripped Raven’s shadowed fur and feathered ridges like touching them would stain her soul. Her posture had adjusted to the creature’s flight rhythm, her knees and hands finding balance instead of fighting every shift.

That bothered Celia more than she wanted to admit.

The morning had shown her things she would not have seen if she had stayed behind Veyrhold’s walls. Liam Hunter in a classroom, training ground, or rumor was one matter. Liam in the field was another. He moved with precision that did not ask to be admired. He wasted almost nothing when the task mattered. Not movement, not speech, not attention. He did not explain himself to make others comfortable, but he also did not act without reason. Each choice seemed to cut away excess until only function remained.

Celia understood that kind of efficiency.

She had been raised in a family where efficiency mattered in everything: speech, study, posture, healing, fighting, reputation, faith. Waste was corrected early. Sloppiness was weakness dressed as habit. She had learned to respect discipline before she learned to like most people.

And despite herself, she respected that part of Liam.

The admission sat unpleasantly in her chest.

He was a dark mage. That alone should have been enough to keep the matter simple. She had been taught from childhood what dark magic meant, what it carried, what sort of people could bear it without being swallowed by it. Yet the field did not care about childhood lessons. It cared about results. Liam had made good decisions. He had kept the group moving. He had not wasted fights. He had protected the task even when he clearly cared more about usefulness than praise.