Call of the Abyss [Book 2 Complete]

Ravina awoke from a fitful sleep with a start, instinctively holding her sword up in front of her. As the sleep cleared from her eyes, she spotted Mondan's torso sticking through the flap of her tent.

He seemed to have woken her, though she couldn't remember how he'd done it. Whatever it was, it was not the correct way, she thought.

"Pretty rude to enter a lady's tent without knockin'," she said grumpily.

She stood and began to buckle her armor, still wearing her clothes from the previous day. She strapped her sword to her belt and quickly brushed through her hair before braiding it down her back.

She didn't know why he'd woken her, but the weak morning sun shining through the flap behind him indicated it was time to rise regardless.

"Apologies, I tried to knock, but this fabric doesn't exactly convey the sound like a good wooden door does," he said flatly.

As far as excuses go, it was pretty decent. Still didn't excuse him peeking in on her sleeping, though.

"There's something you should know, and I thought it best to inform you while we're out of earshot of the others," he explained as he fully entered the tent, apparently accepting her light scolding as an invitation.

"Fine, what's so important, then?" Ravina asked, pushing her braid down into her cuirass.

It was more complicated than it looked. She had to make sure it was tucked tightly enough that it wouldn't impede her in combat, but not so tightly that it would pull on the back of her head whenever she looked around.

"Well, many are still in their tents or taking care of their 'morning activities', so I haven't got a firm count…but it seems that we're down about a hundred adventurers this morning," he said seriously.

Ravina paused, her hands still behind her head.

"What does 'down' mean? They're not in camp?" she asked, her gut suddenly twisting into a knot.

"No, they're not, but it's more than that. Their tents, supplies, packs, everything—gone. They seem to have deserted, ma'am.

"Reandan is among the deserters, and from what I've gathered from speaking with a few early-risers, seems to have led them," Mondan explained with gravity.

A hundred people was ten percent of their entire force, which was already small, considering the task ahead. Losing even one person was a major blow to their total strength, let alone the incredible damage it would do to morale.

Mondan knew this, of course. It's why he brought the issue to her in privacy. He was looking to see what she wanted to do—how she wanted to react—before taking any action or making any statements.

Ravina felt nauseous. Her stomach roiled as though she'd drank heavily last night, despite not having a single drop of liquor.

Mondan was looking to her for leadership and direction, but there was almost no doubt that they left because of her leadership—or lack thereof.

She replayed the incident yesterday in her mind. She'd been so frustrated, and she'd taken it out on the adventurers. Those brave few who'd left their homes behind to follow her, without any firm promise of reward.

They'd looked to her for a moment of inspiration, and she'd delivered them judgement and derision instead.

"Fuck!" she said quietly but forcefully, not wanting to alert the rest of camp no matter how much she wanted to yell.

She grabbed her bag and threw it across the tent, where it hit with a dull thud, and folded limply around one of the support poles. It was empty, so throwing it didn't do anything—didn't even relieve her desire to throw things—it was a lame, feckless outburst, she knew.

She felt a shaking anger and despair that made her want to be violent, but it had no outlet with the camp surrounding her, poised to stir at even the slightest sound.

How would she handle this? How could she handle it?

She didn't know what to do. She had a suspicion that unless she addressed this situation promptly—today—there were going to be more "disappearances" each morning until they reached the marsh.

She needed to calm down. Acting in anger was what had led her to make mistakes last night, so she needed to clear her head. Perhaps a solution would present itself to a clearer mind, rather than one clouded by frustration.

Gala—she needed Gala. Gala always calmed her down somehow. She stressed Ravina out in a lot of ways, but she had this presence about her that invoked peace where it was difficult to find otherwise.

"Where's Gala? She nearby?" she asked, turning around to face Mondan.

He'd been waiting patiently while she threw a minor tantrum, which frustrated her. She wasn't sure why she was frustrated that he'd just stood there. She probably would've bit his head off had he interjected, so his decision was probably correct. It annoyed her to think of him just standing there watching her have a small crisis, though.

"I asked around this morning since I didn't see her. A few people that got up to…uh, 'take care of business' saw her wandering off into the forest just before first light. She's a sort of nature-loving gal, right? I figured that made sense," he reasoned.

Ravina's face paled—Drego! Oh, gods, no.

She dashed off immediately, dodging around Mondan before he could say anything, and bolting out of the tent. She ran as quietly as she could in her urgency. Despite her panic, it wouldn't do to rile the adventurers up.

It also wouldn't do for Gala to fuck this up by making Drego even more guarded. She hadn't come up with a solution to convince him to join, but she knew that Gala's endless stream of word vomit was certainly not going to help.

Sprinting through the forest, she vaguely noted the sense of abnormal peace around her—the same atmosphere she'd picked up on her first trip through it.

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Birds were chirping happily in the first rays of the morning sun, dew speckled the vibrant green grass underfoot and leaves overhead, and all sorts of small mammals were just peeking their heads out of their dens.

Despite the peaceful scene around her, Ravina's panic only grew stronger. She burst into the clearing with heavy footsteps, her caution and quiet while exiting the camp now completely gone.

Sitting on a huge stump by the pond was Gala, chatting endlessly as usual, next to a smiling Drego.

Ravina halted, the sudden cessation of momentum digging small furrows in the wet dirt beneath her boots. She blinked, stunned.

"What...?" she whispered.

Gala seemed to be talking and pointing at things around the clearing, with Drego saying very little—only giving the occasional nod. He didn't seem annoyed, nor did he appear to be merely putting up with her shenanigans. They seemed to genuinely be enjoying each other's company.

Ravina could just barely make out bits and pieces of Gala's torrent of conversation. She appeared to be commenting about the general state of the forest—the liveliness of all the creatures in it. She asked about Drego's favorite this or that, and immediately plowed onward with what her own favorite was without waiting for his response.

This didn't seem to annoy Drego, as he merely nodded at her answers to her own questions (ostensibly directed at him). The only real interaction they had that could be called a conversation was something to do with whether the forest's peaceful serenity could be called a "natural state," and whether it was good or bad to impose one's will on nature.

Gala seemed to think that nature was most beautiful in its wild state. Nature, as she explained it, was an untamed force that wielded kindness and cruelty equally and without bias.

Drego agreed, but he also thought that it wasn't wrong to favor the aspects of nature that were most conducive to a comfortable life, while still appreciating the force of nature as a whole. He positioned it as appreciating the majesty of a storm while not wanting to experience it personally.

Neither seemed judgmental of the other, even if they seemed to disagree about such fundamental things. This was shocking to Ravina, as she'd never disagreed with someone about something she cared deeply about peacefully—not in recent memory, at least.

Gala seemed to finally take notice of Ravina's entrance, her having stood there so long that water had begun seeping into the furrows beneath her boots. She smiled widely and jumped down from the enormous stump. She came skipping over to Ravina, but rather than stopping to chat, she seemed poised to skip right past her.

As she passed, her skip slowed, and she spoke with a mischievous tone that reminded Ravina of Sith.

"Listening to someone isn't just about hearing their words. You have to want to hear them. You have to value their words, and even their silence, as silence also has information to convey.

"Sit down at their table, put their boots on your own feet, and try to experience the gravity that the life they've lived lends to their words.

"You can't understand someone else's words fully while thinking only about your own," she said quietly before resuming her original skipping speed into the woods, that wide grin never abating.

Ravina stood still for a while longer, contemplating. Eventually, she sighed and walked slowly toward Drego, making sure to keep from stomping.

She sat down on the stump a little ways from where Drego was still sitting. He hadn't acknowledged Ravina's approach at all—not even a glance in her direction. She bit down on the frustration at being ignored that tried to heat her chest, trying to "listen to the silence," as Gala had advised.

She gazed around the clearing, noting a few details she hadn't before.

It wasn't a total clearing, as there were several bushes and tall plants growing around the edge. Some seemed to even be growing in manicured sort of gardens, though Ravina was more familiar with gardens for flowers or plants that could be eaten.

She wondered at the reason for these clearly intentional sections of wild growth. However, just watching them for a while was enough for her to notice butterflies and bees and numerous other insects zipping about. She even saw a few rodents scurrying in and around the wild brush.

"If one wants to see wild animals, one must bring their natural environments close," Drego suddenly said, still not looking at Ravina.

It was so sudden and unexpected that she jumped a little. Apparently, he was actually watching her…somehow. At least, he wasn't ignoring her, as she'd initially thought.

She repressed the urge to reply immediately, simply nodding instead. She did her best to imagine herself in his position, thinking about what the words might mean—beyond the obvious.

She imagined living out here, by herself in the forest, and immediately she felt a small bloom of loneliness in her chest. True, she spent long weeks in the wilderness for various jobs with the Guild, but it was always with the expectation of returning to civilization.

She wouldn't call herself a people-person, but something about seeing other people's lives going on around her gave her a sense of peace and belonging, even if they weren't people she knew personally. She felt like she understood why seeing animals would be something one would desire out here—completely devoid of other intelligent life—even if they were just bugs.

"Livin' out here would be pretty lonely without the animals to watch, I imagine," she said, seeing him nod in agreement out of the corner of her eye.

"I've always enjoyed the company of animals," Drego said.

He held out his hand, and a small bird landed on his index finger, chirping and singing. A small smile crept across his face as he watched it. It flapped around and switched positions on his finger for a moment before taking off for another tree nearby.

"They're easy to understand. They have needs, and they have instincts to tend to those needs. It's so…honest.

"No thinking about what someone meant when they said this, or no one being mad because you missed their subtle implications when they said that. Animals are incapable of being anything but honest and themselves," he explained in a serene tone.

He looked off into the treeline, his eyes tracking something that Ravina couldn't see until they stuck their heads out of the canopy—squirrels. They chased each other across the branches of the closest tree before disappearing back into the darkness of the forest cover.

"I've never thought of it that way, but that's definitely true. I've spent a great many days out in the wilderness. I usually take jobs from the Guild that will keep me away from any cities for weeks at a time.

"For some reason, despite not wantin' to really live out there, I always end up coming back. Things're just easier out there—no, easier ain't the right word. They're simpler," she reasoned.

She wasn't sure whether she was talking to Drego or herself any longer, but she felt the frustrations from the past couple days leaving her, as though it were the heat in her breath.

"Gotta say, movin' out and livin' in the woods is much more peaceful than my own solution to social games," she chuckled. "There're a few black eyes floatin' around cities I've visited that I'm not exactly proud of."

Surprisingly, Drego laughed as well.

"Living out in the woods is what I'm doing now—it's not what I've always done. Black eyes are not an unfamiliar solution to me," he chuckled, and Ravina joined him.

Silence filled the space once again, but Ravina wasn't annoyed by it this time. She was actually having a pretty good time imagining the white-haired old man beside her walloping people.

She caught sight of another stump toward the opposite end of the clearing. It seemed to have been precisely chopped, just like the one she sat on now.

She recalled Drego saying he didn't harvest wood from living trees, so this one must have died somehow. It caught her eye because the wood looked similar to some of the planks that made up his cottage.

"Right, you only use wood from branches that fall naturally from trees, or from dead trees. I wonder if you could make somethin' from that giant spirit tree in the marsh…" she mused, more thinking aloud than speaking to anyone else.

Ravina turned slightly to look around the other side of the clearing and started when she noticed Drego—eyes locked with hers—now less than a finger length from her face.

"'Giant spirit tree,' you say?" he asked animatedly.