Book II: Chapter 13 – We Aren’t Doing That

For a moment, no one answers her.

Not because the joke misses, but because most of us are still busy remembering how breathing works.

I try to match her assessment of fun against the battlefield around us.

The ice goblins lie scattered across the snow in twisted heaps of blue-pale flesh, black blood, broken bone, and frost-stiff limbs. Their hooked spears jut from the churned ground at odd angles like ugly little grave markers with blood on them.

Ours.

The Timberline seems anything but fun at the moment.

The snow, once white and pristine, is no longer clean.

It is trampled flat in places, kicked into ridges in others, and darkened everywhere bodies fell hard enough to bleed. Coins glitter among the mess, tiny flashes of silver half-buried in red-black slush.

Kit crouches a few steps away with one hand pressed to her ribs, pretending she is inspecting one of the fallen goblins rather than holding herself together. Her ears are angled sharply back, and her tail moves in one slow, irritated lash behind her. The Spectral Armor around her has faded down to little more than a smoky shimmer over her shoulders, too thin now with her mana running low.

Raka stands near the front of what used to be our line, shield low at her side, Frostreaver hanging heavy in her hand. Her grip tells me how pleased she is with the axe, even now. Her chest rises and falls with slow, deliberate breaths. Blood darkens her white fur in a dozen places. A lot of it is hers. Most of it is not. Her legs are braced wide in the snow, not because she is ready to charge, but because if she does not stand that way, I am not entirely sure she stays upright.

Perri kneels between us with her staff held close against her chest. The gold-white light that had poured out of her only minutes ago has dimmed to a soft tremble around her fingers. Her ears droop, and her shoulders shake with exhaustion. Snow clings to the hem of her coat and melts against the pale fur of her legs, but she does not seem to notice.

Enora is quiet beside me. That’s not new.

This quiet is different from her old silence, though. Less hollow. More drained. Her hat sits low, silver hair spilling forward beneath the brim, and the Crystal Skull of the Spectral Choir is tucked tightly against her body like a sleeping storm she is afraid to wake. The skull gives off no chorus now. No eerie choir. No pale surge of power. Only a faint, cold glimmer through its facets, barely brighter than moonlight trapped under ice.

My shoulder burns where a hook tore through cloth and flesh. My ribs ache every time I draw in too deeply. The bond feels thin and overworked, stretched between pain, relief, exhaustion, and the faint, frantic pulse of everyone realizing we are still alive. 

Bliss saunters toward me.

Her dark curls are wild around her face, one horn streaked with black ichor, and a bright slash of blood marks one cheek. It might be hers. It might just be decoration at this point. Her red skirt is torn at the edge, and one of her boots has a goblin tooth stuck in a buckle, but she does not look ruined the way we do.

Her breathing is hard, but not broken. Her eyes are bright, her smile sharper than it has any right to be, and every step carries that strange, dangerous bounce of someone still riding the high of a fight she enjoyed too much. Bliss is not staggering toward collapse.

Her gaze sweeps the field as she comes, skipping from one dead goblin to the next. At first, the grin stays easy. Then it changes by degrees, sharpening into something more honest as she counts what fell around us.

Her eyes flick back toward the trees behind her, toward the place she and her crew came from.

Then back to the bodies lying thick around us. 

For the first time, Bliss looks genuinely impressed.

“Not bad,” she says, stopping in front of me with both hands settling on her hips. “You lot had a rough run. Not bad at all.”

I stare at her. It’s the best I can manage.

She looks past me, taking in Kit, Raka, Perri, and Enora with quick, sharp eyes. For the first time since we met her, there is no obvious joke already waiting behind her teeth. She is still smiling, yes, but there is something under it. Assessment. Surprise. Maybe even approval.

“For fresh snowflakes in the Timberline,” Bliss continues, “you lot did better than most.”

Kit’s head turns slowly.

“Fresh snowflakes?”

Bliss points at her with one finger. “First-timers. Pretty gear. Clean boots. Terrible sense of when to run. Fresh snowflakes.”

Kit’s expression goes flat.

“I am covered in blood.”

“And already soundin’ local,” Bliss says brightly. “Look at you adapting.”

My sanity has not fully recovered, so I almost laugh. 

It fails halfway and turns into a cough that pulls sharply through my ribs.

Perri’s head lifts at once. “Master?”

“I’m fine,” I lie.

Kit gives me a look that says she feels exactly how untrue that is.

Bliss notices too, but does not press. Her gaze flicks across my torn shoulder, then down to Stormcast, then back to my face.

“Most first runs go worse,” she says. “Usually somebody panics, somebody pukes, and somebody inherits a second set of gear, if you get my meaning.”

I do, unfortunately.

“You, though?” Bliss tips her head, studying me more closely now. “You adapted. Messily. Loudly. With a lot of dramatic almost-dying. But you adapted.”

I might have had a witty retort in me somewhere.

If so, it died bravely before reaching my mouth.

Instead, I look across the battlefield at my exhausted party and the ugly stretch of snow we somehow held.

“Didn’t feel like adapting,” I say.  “That was normal?”

Bliss’s smile softens by half an inch.

“No,” she says. “Looks like your lot took the devil’s share of that run.”

There is sympathy in that.

Admiration too.

For a moment, I see past the grin, the tail, the horns, the theatrical swagger, and the Iron Jest colors bunched at her shoulder. I see someone who has stood in this kind of snow before and learned how to smile afterward because the alternative was worse.

I feel Kit notice the same thing through the bond. Her suspicion does not vanish, because Kit’s suspicion has roots deep enough to survive winter, but it shifts.

Just a little.

Farther back, Bliss’s crew begins moving among the bodies, collecting loot. Boots crunch through the stained snow. Metal clinks. Someone mutters a curse.

The Dark Paladin stands near the treeline with his back half-turned, his blackened armor stark against the frost-heavy pines. One of the fighters kneels beside a corpse, but he does not seem especially interested in what dropped from it.

The rogue is harder to place.

Bliss keeps talking.

“You also didn’t lose anyone,” she says. “That is worth noting. You lot…”

Her voice slips out of focus as my body finally realizes the fight is over.

The wind moves through the trees.

Cold air threads through the torn places in my clothes and finds the sweat cooling beneath my armor. The heat of the fight is bleeding away, leaving the aches behind with professional cruelty.

Kit rises slowly from her crouch. Pain spikes through the bond before her face hides it.

“Kit?”

Her hand drops from her ribs, daggers still in her grip.

“I’m fine.”

She throws my earlier lie back at me, and the bond betrays her immediately.

Pain. Heat. The sharp little breath she refuses to take where anyone can see it.

“Liar.”

A flicker of amusement reaches me, thin but real.

“You too.”

Then, beneath that, quieter.

“I need a second.”

“Then take it.”

Kit breathes once.

Then straightens.

She crosses the few steps between us with the practiced defiance of someone who refuses to limp while anyone interesting is watching. Her shoulder comes close to my arm, close enough that warmth moves through the bond before skin ever touches.

“Beside you.”

My fingers tighten around Stormcast.

“Always.”

Raka’s answer comes a heartbeat later, low and worn, but steady as stone.

“Pack stands.”

Perri’s follows softer, trembling around the edges but warm enough to reach all of us.

“Together.”

Then my eyes find Enora, because I can’t feel her.

She stands a little apart, the skull tucked against her side, a single looted silver piece pinched between her fingers. She studies it like it should give meaning to the pain, the blood, and the bodies scattered in the snow. 

The coin catches a sliver of winter light.

Enora’s fingers close around it, and her purple eyes find me.

Bliss’s voice comes back into focus.

“So,” she says, brightening again, “you lot ready to join in some well-deserved looting?”

I try to pull my attention back to her.

It doesn’t quite make it.

Something behind her sits wrong in the snow.

The rogue is not looting.

He stands beyond one of the goblin corpses, half-shadowed by a leaning pine, one hand low near his belt. He is not looking at the bodies.

He is looking at us.

The nearest fighter rises from the snow with no coins in hand. He says something to the other fighter, too low for me to catch, and begins drifting sideways through the battlefield. Casual, almost. A few steps only.

Enough to change the angle.

Enough to put himself closer to our flank.

The second fighter does the same on the other side, slower and less subtle, pretending to step around a patch of bloody snow rather than reshape the field.

The Dark Paladin has moved closer to the middle of the field, still as a statue.

My stomach goes cold.

My eyes flick to the Raid HUD.

Their health and mana are not nearly as low as ours.

Bliss is still facing me, still wearing the last edge of her grin, but she sees my expression change.

Her eyebrow lifts.

“What?”

Kit’s warning hits the bond like a drawn blade.

“Master.”

“I see it.”

Raka’s hand tightens around Frostreaver.

Perri’s exhaustion twists back toward fear as her ears perk.

Enora does not move, but the skull in her arms gives one faint, low note.

Bliss looks from me to Kit, then to Raka, and the grin finally thins.

“What?” she asks again, quieter this time.

I do not answer.

My eyes stay past her shoulder as my grip tightens on Stormcast.

Bliss turns.

At first, I don’t think she sees what I see.

Then her grin dies.

Not because she sees the angles.

Because she sees the intent.

Her gaze snaps to the rogue’s hand, low near his belt. Then to the fighter’s smile. Then to the other fighter drifting wide through the snow with too much patience and not enough interest in loot.

For one breath, Bliss goes completely still.

The snow keeps falling, soft and absurd over all that blood.

Then her voice cracks across the battlefield.

Cold. Furious. Commanding.

“We aren’t doing that.”

For half a breath, no one moves.

The rogue’s hand stays low near his belt. The two fighters stop their slow drift through the churned snow. The Dark Paladin remains where he is, still and black and centered, his face unreadable beneath the shadow of his helm.

Bliss stands with her back to me now, tail held rigid behind her, shoulders squared in a way I have not seen from her before. 

No flirt. 

Just fury.

One of the fighters lets out a short laugh. It is not a good sound.

He is broad through the shoulders, his heavy armor darkened by old stains and newer blood. His face is hard, his mouth twisted with open contempt, and his eyes keep going to the places where we are hurt.  A strip of red cloth hangs from one pauldron, marked with the Iron Jest shackles and their mocking chain-smile.

“Don’t get dramatic, Bliss,” he says.

“I said,” she answers, each word clipped clean, “we aren’t doing that.” 

The second fighter, thinner and sharper-looking than the first, lets his smile widen.

“That’s adorable.”

Kit’s shoulder brushes my arm.

A reminder.

Her daggers remain low, but the bond sharpens until I can feel every line of her attention. Raka shifts one foot in the snow, slow enough not to look like a threat and heavy enough that everyone hears it anyway. Perri draws in a small breath beside us. Enora’s fingers tighten around the skull.

Bliss does not look back at us.

She keeps herself between us and her party.

The broad fighter notices.

His smile goes uglier.

“You’re the pretty face at the front of the party, Bliss. Don’t start pretending you’re the leader.” 

Bliss’s tail flicks once, sharp as a lash.

“I gave terms.”

“You gave bait,” he says. “Pretty words. Pretty smile. That’s what you do.”

The words hit. I see it in the set of her shoulders.

But not the way he wants. She doesn’t flinch.

I do.

My teeth clench.

Bait.

The fighter gestures toward the bodies around us with one lazy sweep of his sword.

“Worked beautifully, too. Fresh, guildless party. Clean gear. No sponsor worth naming. Strong enough to hold a line, green enough to trust the first pretty thing that winked at them.” His gaze drags over us. “And look at that. They did the hard part.”

Bliss goes very still.

The battlefield seems to tilt beneath my boots.

Kit’s anger flares through the bond, hot enough to burn away some of the pain.

“They drove them into us.”

I do not answer.

I cannot.

Because the moment she says it, the whole fight rearranges itself in my head.

The way Bliss’s crew vanished forward.

The way the goblins kept folding around our side of the line.

The devil’s share.

Bliss had seen the aftermath and thought we survived a bad run.

Maybe she is only now realizing it was not bad luck at all.

The broad fighter laughs again, lower this time.

“Oh, don’t look so shocked. The Timberline does half the work if you know how to nudge it. Draw a little noise here. Cut off a retreat there. Let the little blue bastards smell fresh blood and soft mana.” His eyes flick toward Perri, then Enora. “They go where you point them, more or less.”

Raka’s growl rolls through the snow.

The sharp-looking fighter hears it and looks pleased.

“Careful, wolf.”

Raka answers with a single step forward and a flash of teeth.

“Come closer.”

The fighter’s smile flickers. 

The rogue’s fingers flex near his belt, but he still does not draw. The broad fighter starts drifting until Bliss snaps her head toward him.

“Stop moving.”

He stops. Barely.

Bliss’s voice lowers. “All of you stop moving.”

The broad fighter rolls his eyes.

“Listen to yourself.”

“I am listening just fine.”

“No,” he says. “You’re forgetting what colors you’re wearing.”

His gaze drops to the Iron Jest tabard bunched at her shoulder.

“You’re the smile at the front of the party, Bliss. Don’t start pretending you’re the spine.”

For the first time, something in Bliss’s posture changes.

Hurt gets close enough to the surface that even I can see it before she buries it beneath fury.

Her chin lifts.

“I gave my word.”

The broad fighter scoffs.

“To them?”

He says it like we are not people.

Bliss does not look back at us.

“Yes,” she says. “To them.”

The fighter steps over a goblin corpse, moving again, slow and deliberate, his sword still loose in one hand.

“They’re exhausted. Half-bled. Loaded with drops. Unsponsored. Who’s going to care?”

“We are,” Bliss says.

That stops him for a second.

Then he smiles again.

“Oh, now it’s we?”

Black-violet smoke coils around Bliss’s hand, and Nightcarver slides out of nowhere into her grip. 

The broad fighter looks past her, directly at me.

The bond pulls tight.

I lift Stormcast enough for the spear’s tip to angle toward the blood-dark snow between us.

Not an attack.

A line.

“The raid is over,” I say.

My voice sounds rougher than I intend. Tired. Torn up. Honest in a way I would rather not be.

But it carries.

“Take your agreed share and walk away.”

The fighter laughs under his breath.

“Or?”

Kit answers before I can.

“Or find out how much blood we can still spill.”

The fighter’s gaze shifts to her, taking in the hand no longer pressed to her ribs, the daggers held low, the amber eyes watching every inch of him.

His smile fades another fraction.

Raka’s next breath steams in the cold.

Perri gets one knee under herself and starts to rise. 

Enora’s purple eyes lift from beneath the brim of her hat.

For a moment, all I hear is the wind.

Then the Dark Paladin finally speaks.

“Enough.”

The word cuts through the field with the weight of a lowered gate. Even the broad fighter stops smiling for half a breath. The sharp-looking one’s eyes flick toward him. The rogue’s hand remains low near his belt, but his fingers still.

“We are not doing this here,” he says.

The broad fighter’s jaw tightens. “So now you’re taking her side?”

“I am taking the side of numbers.”

His voice drifts through the snow, metallic and cold.

My eyes flick to the Raid HUD again despite myself.

“Their health and mana aren’t nearly as low as ours.”

Kit’s answer comes back immediately.

“Still with you.”

The Dark Paladin’s helm turns slightly toward Bliss.

“You understand what this becomes if you stand against your own party.”

Bliss’s grip tightens around Nightcarver. The black-violet blade hums faintly in her hand, too large for her body and somehow perfectly at home there.

“I understand what this already is.”

“No,” the sharp-looking fighter says, smile creeping back into place. “What this is, is betrayal.”

Bliss finally turns her head just enough to look at him from the corner of one bright, furious eye.

“You heard me. Field betrayal.”

The rogue shifts.

A boot sliding through the snow.

Kit moves at the same time, no more than a half step, but it changes everything. Her body angles between his line and mine, daggers still low, ears sharp beneath the cold wind.

The rogue stops.

His eyes settle on Kit.

Kit smiles without warmth.

“Try it.”

The rogue says nothing.

“Enough,” the Dark Paladin repeats.

The broad fighter looks at him with open irritation. “You knew the plan.”

Bliss turns to the paladin.

“You knew?”

“I suspected,” he says.

Her laugh is short and sharp and entirely without humor. “That is worse.”

“No,” he says. “Knowing would have required action before the pull. Suspecting required watching.”

Bliss stares at him.

The Dark Paladin’s helm tilts toward her.

“I am not praising the method. And I favor this outcome even less.”

The broad fighter cuts in before Bliss can answer.

“You want to play righteous because the big man looked at you like you were better than us?” He gestures toward me with his sword. “Fine. Play. But do not pretend this is about honor. You liked him. You got stupid.”

Bliss shakes her head.

“There it is.”

The sharp-looking fighter folds his arms. “There what is?”

“The part where cowards explain courage as a crush because they cannot imagine another reason to keep a promise.”

For half a second, I almost forget to breathe.

Kit’s amusement flickers through the bond, sharp and vicious despite her pain.

“I like her.”

“Now?”

“Temporarily.”

The broad fighter takes another step.

Bliss lifts Nightcarver a fraction.

He stops.

Barely.

The blade’s violet edge catches the winter light and drinks it.

“I am not betraying the Jest,” Bliss says. “You are disgracing it.”

The broad fighter barks a laugh. “Disgracing it?”

“Yes.”

“By robbing a guildless party?”

“By needing to.”

The broad fighter’s face darkens.

Bliss presses on, voice bright with poison now. “Look at you. Four Iron Jest colors against a half-dead fresh party, and you still needed goblins to soften them first. How proud the guild must be.”

The sharp-looking fighter’s smile disappears.

The Dark Paladin says nothing.

Bliss points Nightcarver toward the bodies around us without taking her eyes off her party. “They earned their share. We take ours. We take what was agreed. Then we walk out.”

“And when we report this?” the sharp-looking fighter asks.

“Report it.”

“To the Guildmaster.”

“I know who reads reports.”

“You think he’ll side with you?”

For the first time, Bliss does not answer immediately.

“That is what I thought.”

Bliss lifts her chin. “I will answer to him myself.”

“You will answer for turning on your party in the field.”

“I turned on murder.”

“No,” the sharp-looking fighter says. “You turned on profit.”

The Dark Paladin finally draws one inch of steel.

Not enough to attack.

Enough for the sound.

The blade whispers against the scabbard, and every eye turns toward him.

“I said enough.”

This time, no one laughs.

The Dark Paladin looks first to the rogue, who now has a knife visible in his hand.

“Put it away.”

The rogue waits one heartbeat too long.

“Now.”

The knife disappears.

Then the Dark Paladin turns to the fighters.

“The run is over. The terms remain.”

The broad fighter’s face twists. “You cannot be serious.”

“I am always serious.”

“That is not a virtue.”

“No,” the Dark Paladin says. “That is why you are still alive.”

The broad fighter’s mouth shuts.

The Dark Paladin looks to Bliss last.

“This does not end here, you know.”

Bliss’s smile returns by force alone.

Thin. Bright. Terrible.

“Darling,” she says, “nothing fun ever does.”