Chapter 42. The Unchosen Reward Might Not Come Back (Cool, Don’t Overthink It)

Chapter 42: 42. The Unchosen Reward Might Not Come Back (Cool, Don’t Overthink It)

Later that night, I finally opened the system window and dealt with the reward that had been sitting there since the night before.

[REWARD SELECTION: MILLIE]

[Locked: Moonlit Gift. Requires Target’s Hidden Trait to be activated.]

[Bulwark Instinct: When the host braces to defend, a layer of force absorbs a portion of incoming damage. Effectiveness increases with the host’s physical condition.]

[Wardsight: Reveals active magic, hidden enchantments, and hostile intent within a short range.]

I stared at the two options for a long time. The locked one tantalized me, but there was nothing to do about it.

Of the other two, Wardsight sounded handy, but I’d just spent a spear’s worth of blood learning that my real weakness was my defense.

I wasn’t fast enough to dodge everything, and I wasn’t strong enough to ignore it.

’Bulwark Instinct,’ I decided. ’I’ll get Wardsight next time.’

I didn’t know if there would be a next time. The system hadn’t said whether the unchosen options came back, and I didn’t want to think about that too hard because it’s going to make me overthink it.

[Selection confirmed.]

It felt like someone had thrown a warm blanket over my skeleton. A subtle, quiet pressure settled over my body, something like a second skin, and I knew without being told that it would respond the moment I braced for a hit.

’Okay,’ I thought. ’Slightly less likely to die... I’ll take it.’

Millie found me on the porch afterward, wrapped in her shawl, with her ears drooping a little in the cool night air. She sat down next to me and leaned against my shoulder, and for a while we looked at the stars together.

"Leon?"

"Yeah?"

"How do you feel about Sylvara?"

I coughed. "I’m sorry... what?"

"You stared at her for like a full minute," Millie said, and she was smiling a little, which was the only reason I didn’t die on the spot. "I’m not mad... I just want to know."

I thought about lying. I really did.

It would have been easy. But I’d made a promise.

"I think I’m in trouble," I said. "She’s incredible... I feel like I’ve been hit over the head with something very pretty."

Millie let out a soft laugh and rested her head on my arm. "You’re really terrible at hiding things."

"It’s a gift."

"It’s a good one." She was quiet for a moment. "I’m glad you told me."

I put my arm around her, and we sat there until the cold drove us inside.

...

I found Elsbeth on the city wall later that night, alone, looking north.

The moon was out, and the whole valley was silver and blue beneath it. A cold wind came down from the mountains, and she stood at the parapet with her cloak pulled around her shoulders, perfectly still, like a statue of a woman keeping watch over a world that had already ended.

I walked up beside her and said nothing.

We stood there for a long time.

"I am afraid..." she said at last.

It was so quiet that I almost thought I’d imagined it.

"Not for myself," she went on, still staring north. "But for my clan..."

"For my mother and my sisters..."

"I have been away for so long... and I do not know what I will find." Elsbeth clenched her fists. "I have trained my whole life for war... and I have never felt so useless as I did reading that letter."

I wanted to say something comforting. I wanted to tell her it would be okay, that she’d find them alive, that everything would work out.

But I knew better... Anything I said would have been a lie.

So I said the only true thing I had.

"I’ll be next to you," I told her. "The whole way... Whatever we find."

She turned her head and looked at me. In the moonlight, her red eyes seemed softer than I’d ever seen them, and a tiny line had appeared between her brows.

"Thank you, Leon Levarion," she said.

I almost fell off the wall just because she said that with feelings this time...

It was very quiet, so quiet that the wind nearly swallowed it. It was the first time in the entire time I’d known her that she had said those two words, and she’d done it without looking away.

"Do not make that into a joke," she added quickly.

I opened my mouth. I had five jokes ready, and every one of them was perfect.

I closed it again, and I nodded like a good boy.

She turned back to the mountains.

After a moment, she leaned very slightly toward me, just enough that our shoulders touched, and she didn’t pull away.

And yes, I see that as a chance... so yep, I do what any man would do to comfort his women, which is to put my hands around her other shoulders to make her lean closer until she uses my shoulder as a place to rest her head.

We stayed like that until the moon went behind a cloud.

...

Seraphine and Pip caught up with me in the courtyard on my way back to the house. Seraphine stood a few paces away with her arms folded, still wary but a little less stiff than she’d been.

Pip ran straight at me and hugged my leg again, harder this time.

"Are you leaving?" she demanded.

"Yeah... tomorrow," I smiled. "But I’m coming back as fast as I can."

"Do you promise that?"

"I promise."

She considered this. Then she dug in her pocket and shoved something into my hand, a little wooden charm in the shape of a fox, crudely carved and slightly lopsided, strung on a bit of red cord.

What is... this...?

"It’s for luck," she said. "I made it myself... It’s not very good, though."

"It’s... perfect," I said, trying my hardest not to tear up. "I’m going to wear it every day from now on, Pip..."

I tied it around my wrist. She grinned, showing a gap where a tooth should have been, and then bolted back to Seraphine and hid behind her skirt.

Seraphine gave me a long, solemn nod, and I returned it.

From a balcony above, a slim figure in white and gold watched us in silence.

Velora had been standing there for who knows how long, one hand resting on her sword, her face unreadable. I saw her eyes move from me to the wall where I’d left Elsbeth, then back to me.

She didn’t say anything... After a moment, she turned and walked away.

She’s probably going to be a hard wall to break through, but that’s fine... it’s actually a challenge for me.

...

We left at dawn.

The Nightclaw Guard was already mounted when I reached the Red Gate, two rows of twenty riders in white and gold, sitting on tall, long-legged horses with their banners lifting in the wind.

Velora sat at the head of the column on a black stallion, as straight as a spear. And of course... She didn’t look at me.

Sylvara floated beside the column, with her lights drifting around her like a cloud of fireflies. Bonette stood by Millie’s side, holding the reins of a gentle gray mare.

Elsbeth was already in the saddle of a big, dark horse, her face set toward the north.

Magnara stood at the side of the gate with her axe on her shoulder. I walked over and held out my hand.

She looked at it for a long moment, and then she took it, and her grip nearly crushed my fingers.

"Nrrgghh!" I flinched.

"Do not die," she said. "I still wanted to see a human like you make surprises."

"I’ll... ouch... do my best."

"Better do it better."

I got on my horse, which took three tries, and fell into line next to Millie.

Behind us, the people of Elarune had gathered along the road. Some of them were still glaring, and some looked away.

A few watched me with an expression I couldn’t read, and one or two, the old goat among them, gave me the smallest of nods.

I looked at my wrist, at Pip’s little wooden fox. I looked at the system window floating in the corner of my vision.

[Lust Energy: 98/100]

[Passive Decay: 2 per day.]

[No injury penalty.]

My side was nearly healed, thanks to Apex Physique and Sylvara’s charm.

For the first time since I’d arrived in this world, I felt like I had a decent shot at not dying in the next week.

We rode through the Red Gate at sunrise, and the sky behind us turned the color of molten gold.

We were half a day out from the city when it happened.

The valley road had just begun to climb into the foothills when something dropped out of the sky and hit the dirt twenty feet ahead of us with a wet thump.

The riders reined in their horses. Velora raised a fist, and the whole column halted.

It was a messenger hawk, a big, dark-feathered bird with a leather pouch strapped to its leg. An arrow stuck out of its wing.

It was still alive, barely, and it flopped weakly on the ground, one wing dragging in the dust.

Elsbeth was off her horse before I could say anything. She knelt beside the bird and untied the pouch with careful fingers, and the hawk lay still under her hand.

She pulled out a scrap of paper, and I watched her read.

Her face went white.

"What...?" I said. "What is it?"

She held it out to me. The message was only a few lines long, written in a hurried, shaking hand, and the ink had smeared in one corner.

’The Chain has stopped attacking the outer villages.’

’They are not asking for the stronghold anymore.’

’They are asking for a white rabbit, by name.’

’How the fuck do they know?’

I read it three times. Then I looked up, past the paper, past Elsbeth, to the small figure on the gray mare at the back of the column.

Millie was sitting very still, with Bonette beside her, and her white ears pressed flat against her head.

Somewhere in the north, an army of slavers had just said her name.